Two Riverside visits — Oakley and Milton Ernest

I drove to the village of Oakley, which has several areas with easy access to the banks of the river Great Ouse, at this time of year, this is an area with a wealth of different indications of different stages of fresh young growth. This was especially noticeable on the trees alongside the road heading towards the church at Oakley, close by a small park and the river Great Ouse. I had parked up in a small area opposite to the gate to the river bank park that has a gate leading to a path across a green field and also an entrance to the riverside path on the other side of the road bridge across the river.

I was fortunate to have some sunshine in the early stages of this trip, but it was not destined to last. One very noticeable observation I made was just how many large tree branches were caught in the various barrages at the bridges and weirs. From my walks in the nearby woodland paths, I was pleased that it was far less muddy than it had been a few weeks earlier, and that some of the clearings had small stacks of collected fallen branches. The barrages on the river were well-filled and the buttresses of the bridge were holding back some very large tree trunks. Also in the small park that stretches from the bridge to the church there were several cut down trees.

I spent much of my time capturing the different stages of growth of leaves and seeds as I walked along the margins, and also noted that one of the walls at the end of the road bridge had very bad cracks, yet also reasonably recent new pointing. My stay at this stretch of the river concluded by my capture of the fresh new season’s various growth stages, before driving to Milton Ernest where I captured a pair of swans on this stretch of the same river, and more young flowers.

I try to make a point of photographing the information panels as it comes in handy when choosing locations at future times.

Visit to Oakley & River

                My visit to Oakley was frustratingly short on images due to a long cloud that obscured the much-needed sunshine I had needed to capture the scenes before me. On this trip I was using my Canon R6 with my earlier lightweight Sigma 60-600mm on my lightest tripod.

               The river was high still, but the walk in the fields alongside was reasonably easy going, and on my arrival I anticipated I would have uninterrupted warm sunshine. I should have taken more notice of one particular cloud, as it was wide and just high enough in the gentle breeze to rob me of that sunlight for many minutes. I therefore left the camera inr of  position for that shot in the hopefully short wait for the cloud’s passing, and walked around seeking further viewpoints for when its return allowed me to resume Normal Service!

               During this forced interlude, the only other people sharing this open space were two young women seated chatting at the small table and seats. Eventually the cloud finally cleared the sun, and allowed its rays to capture some shots of the church through the leafless screen of trees. I altered my views to reveal more of the church and to capture the river with the tall weeping Willow, and also the cluster of more distant fine weather clouds beyond the river.

               As I was beginning to gather my gear for my return to the car, I saw a man very obviously heading directly towards me, as he came close enough for conversation he greeted me with: “I believe we have met before when you have been out with your camera…” He continued that he was not absolutely sure until he was closer, and he recalled the location, and I was able to confirm that I remembered the spot, and complimented his recall of the occasion, which was likely around a decade earlier! We continued in conversation and as I had only a single card on me, I suggested he take a shot on his phone so that later he could view the few shots from the day’s visit. We parted once at the road, for him to complete his walk across the fields and for me to return to the car and head for home.

               My afternoon was once again to succumb to Serendipity, for I realised I was close enough to visit a friend at Milton Ernest, so I headed that way; it was there whilst enjoying a cup of tea with a lady whose house is at the end of a road that leads to the River Great Ouse, that she showed me a bottle she had converted to a lamp which rounds off the accompanying gallery of the day’s images.

An Afternoon around Stagsden

It seems a while since I took this group of pictures, but life got in the way, with a few tribulations that involved a boiler sparking out, however that is now behind me, so I have now set myself the task of trying to write up what happened on that weekend.

It was a day that began with the typical early morning mist that signifies Autumn, but warmed up remarkably quickly to present blue skies and puffy white Cumulus clouds which gave Hay Lane a full appreciation of its name, this was the Big Country, largely flat, though with hills rising and falling along a largely straight road, so I pulled over to capture the hill itself and later, the small hamlet that had grown up around a farm and small pond. I wandered with my long lens into the undergrowth beyond the pond on the offchance there might be some wildlife lurking in the scrub or thicket, and did catch a fleeting sight of a dragonfly and a butterfly, and noted the raindrops still on the long grass from the night before. I soon wandered back to the edge of the pond where I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity of the water and the numbers of small fish.

As I wandered back towards my car, I fell into conversation with one of the hamlet’s inhabitants who said I might be interested in capturing one of his sunflowers which had started life with just one flower head, but as the summer progressed had developed green towards its centre and then its edge to produce a total of four flower heads all conjoined. He invited me to see other flowers and also apparently a cluster of twenty four self-set sunflowers. It turns out he had been a Seed Merchant’s lorry driver before retiring to this quiet rural spot miles from anywhere. After a stroll through his garden chatting and my taking pictures, he set off with his wife and I continued to Stagsden which if I understand the sign I saw had once been known as Stachedene.

As I wandered around its church I noted that when the clouds drew across the sun, the angle was very well suited to capturing the building lit and some trees in shadow, but also the clouds were gathering more and so the chances of getting a shot were steadily diminishing. I did succeed in the end.

I then headed back out into the countryside and spotted a dried up pond with a large Weeping Willow, well that is the wrong order – I spotted the Willow and the depression and assumed a pond, but found it dried up. I drove then to the weak bridges at Oakley and the weir on the The Great Ouse, and it was there that I heard the distinctive sound of an older engine and just managed to grab a shot of this red car with its horizontally-opposed twin engine.  I completed this trip by wandering quietly along a path and under a fallen tree towards the weir. It was interesting to note it had obviously been decided to leave the tree over the path, which probably gave great entertainment to children playing here.