Winter Sun Remembered

It's been a roller coaster of a year so far with some good times and some bad times.  I feel I've been far too caught up with things that have been happening to  find time to spend on my photography and blogging but maybe now we have turned a corner and I can get back to doing things I want to do.  The weather hasn't been brilliant recently so I decided to go back to the start of the year and review some of the photos I have made but not got around to posting.

So way back in the middle of January we had a spell of cold and sunny days so on the 15th we decided to just drop everything and march up Black Hill to the trig point at the top.  There are several ways to get there but we decided to take the direct route along the Pennine Way from the road above Wessenden where the sausage van is parked in the mornings.  As the signpost says it is about one and three quarter miles.  It's very up and down (but mainly up, very steeply in places) crossing a couple of streams and ending about half a mile from the Holme Moss television transmitter.  As you can see the sky was a beautiful azure blue with a few wispy clouds and a hint of other small clouds just on the horizon. 

This second photo was looking back to our car on the road at the start of this stretch of the Pennine Way.  The flagstones make it a much easier walk than it used to be as this is a stretch of the Pennine Way that goes through some very boggy peat moors.  At this point we've crossed both of the streams which have cut a couple of deep valleys into the moorland and we're heading up a fairly gentle slope before the main rise up onto Black Hill.

As we walk along the path there are a few of the red grouse sunbathing in the winter heather.  There are patches of frost where the heat of the sun hasn't been able to reach yet this morning.  Sometimes we don't see the grouse hiding until we are quite close to them when they will suddenly fly off, flapping their wings noisily and loudly calling their warning to the others.

At the top of the hill there are more frosty patches and the puddles of water have a frozen skin.  Although sunny, it's quite windy up here and it is bitterly cold.  Lynne is well wrapped up with her fleece under the heavy waterproof jacket.  The layer of clouds on the horizon are starting to increase and it's getting a bit misty when we look down into the valley from here.

We reach the trig point and the morning sun is making long shadows from the white post.  This point is a popular resting point for walkers coming from all directions including out journey from Wessenden on the A635 and from the other end of this stretch of the Pennine Way at Crowden on the A628.  It's quite a nice walk of around six miles and is very popular all year around.  We just tend to walk up to the trig point and back which is about three and a half miles but sometimes we'll take different routes making it around 5 miles.  Other times we have done a circular route going down to Wessenden Lodge (as on the signpost) across to Black Moss Reservoir, take the alternative Pennine Way route back to the A635 and then up to Black Hill before heading down the way we have just come, back to the signpost.

Here's Lynne getting into the alternative shot of the trig point, still cold and raring to get off on our journey back down the hill.  I didn't take many photos on the way back and none worth posting so that's it for today.  Next time, I went to Digley Reservoir the following morning with Evey dog when it was still very cold, but more cloudy and misty.  So I took a lot of scenic shots and did some post processing on them.  Hope you like them.