Another Walk; Another Day. However, the destination is simply to visit the top end of the woods that bound the Millennium Park, and to do that I drive further north along the A421, and at the turning towards the station and College, I take the first turning on the right, and park up just before the turnstile to the north end of the park. Since the weather is settled, I remove the camera cover, and simply pocket the two closeup lenses, lock the car and head for the entrance.
Decisions, decisions: which way to go? — Left, or Right? The latter. Sadly, I walked a fair distance, looking right and left, up the bank, and down towards the brook that babbles gently from the recent rains an finally I find reason to switch the camera on, and remove the tethered lens cap, and take my opening shots of the vibrant green coat the tree is sporting, attracted by the curved e-shaped tree trunk that sports an interesting fungus, with a horizontal, similarly coated horizontal bough that forms the Euro symbol. Having never spotted this rich dark maroon and black fungus before, I move closer for a more detailed image before continuing to find similarly moss-clad branches.
One of the most attractive features of Autumn in the woods is that despite the general perception that this season is dominated by browns, albeit with numerous shades, the reality is that the palette is far more diverse, and never more so than when the sun is out. The next leaves I spotted and captured, makes this vividly apparent — in one image, the hero leaves are rich in both green and red, yet beyond are golden yellows, and intensely blue-biased greens. The Autumn spectrum of colours is far from monochromatic shades of brown, and as if to add further emphasis to the colour palette of Autumn, I find a lone, young white flower alongside deep maroon and thorn clad branches and dead and dying fruits.
After passing steep, muddy banks with obvious slithery attempts to climb for better views or to reach good areas from which to fish, I finally find some wooden steps that are safe for me to consider safely to reach the shoreline and get glimpses of the lake beyond. I find a lone gull perched on a small buoy, and beyond, three chimneys of this area’s past history in the Brick industry. This lake and numerous others in Bedfordshire are the reminders of the era when clay was dug to support the brick industry around this area. The county’s lakes now support wildlife, and the leisure activities from boating, sailing, water-skiing and angling to water sports like windsurfing.
Swirling, bubbling water always is attractive in photographs, and the little weir with its trapped bottle, held by the current definitely appealed, as well as affirm the quality of the lens on this camera, my handy LUMIX fz10002.
Naturally I am attracted to the colour I capture, but on walks like this it is the variety of subject matter, and often some of the details, and textures attract my attention, as do patterns that can have been formed by recognised actions, and others that surprise by the sheer oddity or happenstance — for instance the calm water at the boundary to the rippled surface which held the reflection of the chimneys on the water’s surface, and then the lack of fear exhibited by the gull when passed closely by the Grebe. Also, the textures when one part of a branch is covered in its death by new life in the form of coloured fungal growth, or the vibrant reds of berries that appear when the leaves have had their time.
The sunset that closed the day I spent out with the camera was definitely a fitting end to my walk, and to end the day, when I captured the final curtain from outside my house with the silhouette of leafless, tall willows, against the rich colours of the fading sunset.
