Wintery walk

After an initial plan to go to Wintersett to photograph on Saturday fell through, we planned for a Sunday closer to home instead.

Up early (well, for a Sunday), and the morning was dry, crisp and with the promise of bright light and blue skies. We loaded up (tripods, cameras, lenses, film, spare batteries, etc) and set off to catch a reasonably early 110 to Busy Corner. Walking up towards Sandal Castle, there was still a lot of snow (now brittle and more ice than snow) as well as treacherous patches of compacted snow and ice, glassy and bright in the sunlight.

There was still a reasonable amount of snow around the castle remains, with pools of ice highlighting the moat around the ruins. The views from the upper deck showed snowy fields in all directions.

We took lots of pictures, of the castle and grounds as well as the views over Pugneys towards Emley Moor. Then, the walk back to the main road, this time down Castle Road. We then walked to Newmillerdam, which was a pleasant walk in the fresh, chilly sunshine.

Our reward was lunch before a quick look at the dam itself. Large parts of the surface were frozen, in places seemingly to some depth. Lone branches stuck out of the ice at awkward angles in places and all across the surface were tracks as if the birds had used it for skating.

Time for a few more photos before hoping on a 59 bus back into town.

A great way to spend such a lovely day, and great to finally get chance to get out after what feels like a very long time indeed.

To my disappointment, I don’t feel any of the photos I took were particulalry good and I gave up on processing them. OBP is trying to persuade me to look at them again though.