Rainy mists coming down from Minchinhampton Common

Looking up from my desk I noticed the morning’s continuous cloud cover had deteriorated. Lower thick mist had settled down onto Minchinhampton Common on the distant hilltop above the Golden Valley. It often happens that mists descend down the slopes of the combes, such as Brimscombe valley, where the houses can be seen in the distance.

As this happened this morning, a patch of brighter light close to the horizon began to develop as the sun’s oblique rays shone from the south under the mists. The oddness of the light attracted me so I opened my study window and took a few photos, as I like to record the variety of the light and its effect on the views across the main valley. 

The houses in the left foreground are on the south facing side of the valley and mark where the ancient Thrupp Lane runs along the spring line and the eponymous hamlet of Thrupp evolved on dry land above the valley bottom. The valleys are formed where water emerging from the ground has eroded the alternating strata of various limestone, clays and Fuller’s Earth, so evocative of these parts of the Cotswold landscapes close to the escarpment.

To the left of the picture are corresponding hilltops, forming the ‘other’ side of the Golden Valley formed by the River Frome and its smaller tributaries. I find it amazing that in a straight line between the top of some nearby hilltops (eg at Painswick Beacon at 277 metres – see an interactive map displaying these elevations) and west Germany there is nowhere higher, certainly not in England, because the strata all slope downwards to the east, gradually underlying the chalk and alluvial deposits, of south-east England and the Dutch lowlands.