Autumn leaves

I love the colours of autumn, rich reds and golds. The leaves seem to be colouring and falling so quickly this year so when I heard gale force winds were due on Sunday I knew I had to get some shots quickly.

The weather perked up a bit on Saturday afternoon so I headed off to Talkin Tarn, near Brampton.

Lots of other folk obviously had the same idea and the area around the cafe was full of families.

There's a footpath running right around the Tarn, a flat even walk, sometimes the flatness means it's a bit boring (dare I say that) but on Saturday the colours were lovely and there were ducks, geese and swans on the water to add a bit of interest.

Tom was with me so as soon as the footpath cleared I got him to walk through the woods into the light.

Light was coming and going and despite the oxygenating plant that was installed last year the tarn still had that awful smelly blue green algae, it shows up on photographs and looks awful.

On the far side of the tarn there's a building that was once a hotel. It's been bought by a developer but I think there's some dispute about what he will be allowed to do with it.

As we got to this bit of the path the rains came, there's absolutely nowhere to shelter so I wrapped my camera in a plastic bag and kept walking. Fortunately it didn't last long and as we came out of the trees the sun appeared, I turned back and took a photograph. It wasn't until I got the  photo's downloaded to the computer that I noticed the rainbow over the trees!

As well as the geese there seemed to be three seperate groups of mute swans, they were very territorial fluffing their feathers up and steaming across to interloppers. They are such beautiful birds, wish I'd taken some food along.

Took us about an hour to walk around the water, but that was slow because I was stopping to take photographs, I'd have liked to look for fungi in the woods but the day was coming to an end and it was getting dark so we headed off home.

Thanks for dropping in here, I've given up on my Twitter page I just couldn't work out what I was supposed to do and I never saw comments that other people @'d to me, don't know why they didn't show up on my page.

Catch you later.

Walltown with the sheep

Sunsets on the Wall.

At this time of the year the days are short, sometimes it's overcast all day then an hour before the sun is due to set it clears.

So it was the other night and I grabbed my gear for a trip to Walltown.

I got to the parking area at the foot of Walltown Crags just as everyone else was heading home, still a lot of people enjoying days out here in Northumberland.

I wanted to go up to Mucklebank Crag so I walked along the farm track that passes Walltown Farm.

The collies didn't run out to greet me as they normally do so they must have been out working with William the farmer.

Just past the farm I turn left up the watery track and over the stile.

I paused for a moment to enjoy the view to King Arthur's Well, the two trees on top are colouring up nicely and a few wispy clouds in the background had me clicking the shutter button.

Fungi are beginning to show, we get lots of brightly coloured waxcaps on Hadrian's Wall and I tried to take photo's on a particularly nice orange specimen using my 17-55mm lens. Couldn't quite get the focus but it made a nice record shot and I'll go out again with a macro lens when we get a good day.

Onward and upward, the stone path that climbs Mucklebank is brilliant, I used to dread the slipping and sliding on my bottom that seemed to accompany every trip up or down before the path went in.

The sun at the moment is directly in line with Hadrians Wall at Walltown and the cloud had disappeared meaning every photograph I took was filled with those little flare circles.

I decided to wait until the sun got further down and a little less bright and wandered away to the other side of Mucklebank Crag.

The views here are lovely, to the east you look towards Cawfield Crags and to the south across the North Pennines ( as shown in the picture with the sheep). One day I'm going up there with a flask of coffee to just sit and enjoy the views, a great way to lift the spirits I imagine.There are always sheep on this crag and I wanted to get a shot with them in the foreground. They played 'lets show the photographer our bottoms' and eventually we both gave up and I wandered back to the setting sun.

Not the blazing sunset I'd have liked but hey, it was just nice to get out in the fresh air and clamber about where not only Roman soldiers walked before, but King Arthur and his knights gathered.

We have sunshine at the moment but metcheck is showing horrible weather for the next week, let's hope they've got it wrong.

Catch you later.

Joan

Sometimes you just have to be there

Had a busy day and time slipped by without me getting a breath of fresh air. At about 5.30pm I glanced out of the window and saw a lovely sky with mackeral clouds, the sort that colour up beautifully at sunset.

The sun sets at about 6.30pm at this time of the year, so I'd left things a bit late for anywhere that involved climbing.

I checked the flagpole ( flying the Northumbrian flag of course) in my back garden and saw there was no wind, great for reflections if it stays that way, so I was off to Crag Lough.

Driving along the Military Road I can see that I'm leaving those wonderful clouds to the south but you just never know with weather and I reckoned it was still worth a punt.

Arrived at Crag Lough at the same time as another photographer, he'd seen the same cloud formation that I had. But that wasn't what we were looking at now, the Lough was lovely and still though and the reflections were nice, so it was worth hanging around.

We were rewarded patches of colour appeared and were reflected in the waters, the boats had nice highlights. Then just when you thought this show of light had peaked another wave of colour appeared - shutters were firing twenty to the dozen.

A couple of walkers passed by on the Hadrians Wall Path, although by now it was getting dark they still had a way to go. I wouldn't like to be scrambling over the trail in the dark, and I do hope they got to their destination for the night safely.

It's the Haltwhistle Walking Festival this week so we have lots of walkers around.

I was reluctant to leave the Lough but finally it got so dark that it became impossible for the camera, to focus so I finally gave up and headed back home.

I'd been out less than 2 hours yet I felt so uplifted by the light display, wish you could have been there.

Catch you later.