Martindale Church

Today was our unaccompanied day - when the group  went out without John to find locations for ourselves.  After examining the weather forecast (pretty good over the whole area), John suggested the Pooley Bridge/Martindale area.  Four of us in one car headed straight for Martindale, parking by the church.  A couple of us headed up Hallin Fell to enjoy the view from the top along Ullswater in both directions.  It was very breezy at the top (had to watch the camera vibrations even on a tripod) but quite rewarding.  The others got as far as they could up the hill before, sensibly, recognising that they shouldn't go any further.  (I found the descent a lot more painful on the knees than the climb.)

At the bottom I wandered around the church for a while, and took some shots inside.  This was the first, and I was quite pleased with it.  I was a little surprised this evening to discover that this single shot contained detail even in the highlight of the Bible pages - brought out here with a little curves adjustment.  (So I won't need the over- and under-exposed images of the same scene to make an HDR picture.)

At the end of the afternoon we stopped in Pooley Bridge for an ice cream before heading home.  The new temporary bridge in the village has been built at the same location as the original bridge which was washed away in the floods early this year.  The signs suggest it will take a couple of years to build a permanent replacement, but it is not clear how they will do that without closing this vital crossing again for a significant period, as they cannot build a replacement bridge on the same site without first removing the temporary bridge.

Some interesting suggestions and demonstrations by John this evening during the review of our images.

There is smoke in the sky to the north west of here:  not sure yet the source of it, but possible quite extensive grass fires.  Perhaps we will find out tomorrow.