Dovestone October 2021

The Dovestone reservoir and valley are favourite haunts in Autumn and, when I visited earlier this week, I realised it has been almost a year to the day since I was here before. As I live in the area, that seems to be quite surprising until you realise just how popular the place has become in the last year and a half, with congested roads, gridlock on the approach to the limited parking area, let alone people lighting BBQs in an already endangered area that was much damaged in the fires of 2018. Even the nearby village of Greenfield has been clogged up with visitors, so I kept to the quieter pathways in recent months.

There was definitely the feeling of familiar “same old same old” on arrival – the weather was very dull, with heavy low cloud and already spotting rain and to make things more difficult, part of the 2.5 mile pathway around the reservoir was closed off, creating a detour over a muddy path on the hillside, so I decided to turn around and walk anti-clockwise, at least as far as the “Dovestone tree” on the opposite bank. There are additional tracks around adjacent Yeoman Hey and Greenfield reservoirs, or a 1.5 mile steeply climbing route to Chew reservoir, but after such a lot of rain I decided to stay at lower levels. Part way around, I stopped to sit on a bench and admire the view. Soon I felt the warmth of sunlight on my back, which spread quickly across the landscape. A few quick shots enabled me to capture the first HDR panorama above, created from four overlapping horizontal captures, each three bracketed exposures.

The clouds appeared to close up again quite quickly, but about an hour later, a further break appeared, giving me the chance for a few more shots on the way back to the car. Compared with last year’s shots, they are very different, so it just shows that it’s always worth another look. The gallery shows a few more from the afternoon.