Over and Underground in the Dales

I regularly go walking with a group of friends, often in one of the spectacularly beautiful National Parks that we have within a couple of hours drive from our homes in Greater Manchester. As well as fresh air and exercise it gives me the opportunity to shoot a few landscapes and detail pictures just for fun.

April's walk was around (and up) Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales. No sooner had we set off from Clapham village when this disused tunnel presented the first 'Close Encounters' photo-opportunity of the day. There is no posing and my friends didn't even know I was taking the shot - I had to quickly get my camera ready before they disappeared into the distance.

It was windy today! These dry grasses caught in a fence reminded of photographs I've seen of Tibetan Prayer Flags (mostly in Himalayan mountaineering books by Chris Bonington, Doug Scott and Co.). I believe it can be a bit breezy in the Himalayas too!. Although the day was bright and dry, the effect of shooting into the Spring sun (trying it's best to peep through the clouds) created some brooding black and white Yorkshire Dales landscapes.

On the slopes of Ingleborough, close to Alum Pot, we came across the entrance to Long Churn Caves...and ventured in. We hadn't expected this cave system to be so accessible, but even though it was pitch black and had a stream running through it (half a metre deep in places), we manged to navigate quite a way down the caves with just one small torch between us.

It's worth mentioning that people have died in these caves in wet weather as recently as 2007 -these tunnels are prone to flash floods. The weather today, and for the previous few days, had been bone dry and with no prospect of rain for the rest of the day we were perfectly safe. We wouldn't have gone down if it had been raining and I would recommend extreme caution when exploring any of the pots and caves in the Dales.

From a photographic point of view I'd been expecting an overground walk today, not an underground one, so I was totally unprepared for photgraphing such a difficult subject. Once inside the caves it was totally dark so I had to manually set the focus by the light of a pencil torch and had no option but to use the pop-up flash on my Nikon D200. The results are a good record of the experience but I doubt I'll be entering them for any awards!

This area of the Yorkshire Dales is famous for it's limestone pavement scenery. I spotted this formation that looked almost as though it could have been carved out by ancient civilisations in times past.

The general views around Ingleborough in the afternoon were very hazy, but later in the day as we descended back towards Clapham we were treated to beautiful evening light catching the tops of these limestone cliffs.

And finally.....a wide angle lens isn't the most flattering for portraits but this little pony was very inquisitive and I couldn't resist capturing this whimsical viewpoint.