About two years ago, I took what to me was an interesting landscape from within some woods looking out on a valley with an open sort of gateway displaying what was described as ‘Conservation Walks’ on the right hand post.
For the life of me, I could not remember exactly how I arrived at the spot – all I knew was it was a long walk along a potholed muddy track, then a long uphill trudge through woodland. Metadata came to my rescue – I had a few other photos taken a time earlier, for which I had capture times and which were of locations I recognised. The discrepancy was around a quarter of an hour, and I knew that on the day I took the shot I had been quite lucky that it had not rained for some time, so I was able to drive deep into the woods.
I spent a long time poring over the grainy image of a map in the picture and trying to match it to Google Earth, and finally I was fairly sure I had a good clue as to where I needed to go and so I was up before dawn to see whether I could find the starting point – the unmade road.
Half an hour into my journey and I set off from my last known location of the preceding image, and driving along a road for which I had some recollection. I came to an offset crossroads, but turned right; this did not feel right so I turned around, this time taking a right turn; a dogleg left and right from my original direction, this seemed more likely and, when a turning appeared on my right that led uphill towards the treeline, I took it. After a further half-mile with trees either side I recognised the track! I was now within a mile of my destination. However, the rain of the last few days had filled the potholes and after about half a mile, I realised that there was nowhere to leave the car without blocking the single lane track, and the puddles were extremely deep and increasingly slippery. Were I to be stranded here, the chances of telephoning and rescue were slim, so I started the long reverse to where I could finally turn and go back. I now knew the location which is what mattered most! I will return.
I must get hold of GPS data for landscape and wildlife images!
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