The English Lake District in September
By all these lovely tokens September days are here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer. Helen Hunt Jackson
We have just had a lovely holiday in our favourite spot in the English Lake District. We had pretty decent weather and got to walk out every day. We had occasional torrential rain, but fortunately, not at any times when it interfered with our plans. Some of the days were a bit grey and flat, which makes for lacklustre photographs, but we also had some spectacularly beautiful days, with bright sunshine and haze free, clear views, which more than made up for the rest. Some of the areas we visited looked as fabulous as I’ve ever seen them.
So this post is pretty much just about the photographs, so I’ve set it up as a gallery. Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger view. I’m trying a new gallery feature for such image-heavy posts, so the images all open in a simple pop-up ‘lightbox’. If you want to view them all in sequence, simply start with the first one and scroll through them using the left/right arrows at the edges. I have set it to display the images at random, so if you refresh the page, they will appear in a different order.
There are captions with the photographs that explain where they were taken etc. The lightbox re-sizes to a proportion of your browser window, so if you want to see them larger, go to full screen and they’ll possibly increase in size, especially the portrait images.
The waterfall in the river Duddon at Birks Bridge.
The Lakeside end of Windermere taken from the base of Gummer’s How on a spectacularly clear day.
A lovely walk through the trees at Whinlatter above Keswick. The heather was gorgeous.
We stopped for a rest in our walk on the shore of Grasmere and fed ducks and enjoyed the scenery.
A good number of the thistles will have a bee atop them.
One of our favourite quiet spots to stop for lunch. I’ve seen deer and red squirrels in this spot.
The approach to Tarn Hows, as pretty as I’ve ever seen it.
The walk around Tarn Hows on a gorgeous day.
A Herwick ewe. They’re born with black wool and little pointy faces and their coat lightens and their faces round as they grow older.
I’m always staggered by the long term effects of the passage of water on these rocks in the Duddon River at Birks Bridge.
The Langdales looked as fabulous as I’ve ever seen them, the light just made the textures and colours sing.
A gorgeous sunset at the place we stay.
A very ‘Alpine’ feeling walk through Whinlatter, north of Keswick.
A lovely area of farmland we drove through near Keswick.
Exquisite tiny heather flowers.
The walk to Sadgill at the end of the Longsleddale Valley.
The thistles were also especially abundant this year.
Longsleddale
I loved the colours and assorted natural and man-made textures in this scene.
I always see Fly Agaric mushrooms in the same place at the base of a very large conifer. These were just emerging so still pristine.
Windermere as viewed from the base of Gummer’s How.
At was a totally glorious day when we waked around Blea Tarn.
Walking around Tarn Hows in the English Lake District.
The furthest point in the walk around Tarn Hows, we always stop here on the seat to take in the scenery.
I have a little bit of a fixation with gateposts and gates, especially ones with some age.
I love seeing fir cones on the trees, they’re as beautiful as any flower.
I totally love beech woodland with a bit of sunlight filtering through.
Blea Tarn and the Langdales were crystal clear and glorious.
A lovely spot on the edge of Grasmere where we always sit for a drink in the middle of our walk.
I love seeing the geometry of piles freshly cut timber – it’s a shame that I can’t give you the fabulous smell too.
Windermere from near Wray Castle
We turned a corner one evening and were met with this most amazing light.
Herdwick sheep in the Langdales. They were curious, but I couldn’t get any closer.
Herdwick sheep, an iconic and familiar sight in the Lake District.
I could see the sun twinkling through these beech trees and hoped that I could capture it.
The Langdales on a just about perfect day.
Lake District Panoramas:
Some of the vistas in beautiful places like this are very hard to do justice in a mere photograph, so I love creating panoramas by stitching together multiple individual and overlapping photographs to make a single very wide view. This requires the individual frames to be taken very carefully, with everything set manually (including focus and white balance), so details don’t change from one frame to the next to get a consistent join. If you’re interested in creating your own panos, I wrote a tutorial some years ago about my own technique, which is still pretty much how I do them now.
I note with each one how many frames form each image. The original master images are all in excess of 50 megapixels. In this gallery, they’ll open at the width of your browser window, even though they’re actually larger than you’re likely to see them, but if you want to see more details, there are links below to even larger versions which will allow you to scroll around the image to see more, as you’ll be seeing the image in the browser at exactly the size I uploaded it.
Tarn Hows on a fabulously clear and bright day. 4 landscape frames stitched.
A walk at the end of the Longsleddale Valley, heading towards Sadgill. 4 landscape frames stitched.
I wasn’t sure that the colour version of this pano worked very well, the light had been so flat and dull that day, so I tried it in black and white.
The Langdales on a fabulously sunny and clear day, the most perfect I’ve ever seen this scene. 5 portrait frames stitched together.
Blea Tarn in the Langdales on a pretty much perfect day. 5 landscape frames stitched together.
The bay at Arnside just before a very high bore tide. The weather deteriorated with the tide, so although the water looked better, the sky didn’t. 7 portrait frames stitched together.
One of my favourite areas of deciduous woodland to drive through – on the western shore of Windermere. 4 landscape frames.
This magnificent mature beech tree holds court over the younger trees around it in Penny Rock Wood near Grasmere. 5 portrait frames stitched.
This is a gorgeous spot in one of the walks around Whinlatter near Keswick. Thankfully there are lots of seats to sit and enjoy it. 5 portrait frames stitched.
Taken on the perimeter walk around Blea Tarn in the Langdales. 3 landscape frames stitched.
Larger versions:
If, like me, you like looking at the details in large panoramas, I’ve also uploaded a bigger version of each image too – I’ve put them separately so that they don’t load unless you click the links, in case you’re on restricted data. They’re all in the region of 2.5 megapixels and around 3000 pixels on the long side and around a megabyte in data size, so they will take a moment or two to load. They’re in the same order as posted in the gallery above. Depending on your browser and settings, they may well load initially at a reduced size to fit the window, but can probably be clicked or swiped to enlarge and allow you to scroll to view it all.
- Tarn Hows Panorama – 3368 x 800 pixels, 980Kb
- Longsleddale Panorama – 3000 x 754 pixels, 811Kb
- Longsleddale Panorama in black and white – 3000 x 754 pixels, 1.28Mb
- Langdale Panorama – 3000 x 938 pixels, 1Mb
- Blea Tarn Panorama – 3500 x 719 pixels, 928Kb
- Arnside Panorama – 3000 x 844 pixels, 636Kb
- Windermere Woodland Panorama – 3000 x 711 pixels, 1.31Mb
- Penny Rock Wood near Grasmere – 3000 x 978 pixels, 1.75Mb
- Whinlatter woodland near Keswick – 2500 x 879 pixels, 1.2Mb
- Blea Tarn Panorama no.2 – 3000 x 930 pixels, 1.2Mb
