Lakes Miscellany | - Click on the image above to view gallery
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This journal entry covers all those pictures from our holiday that never quite fitted into any other album, but would be a shame not to include on the website. As is well known the weather was not doing its best during early September but we are never put off and can always find something to do. I do, however, rather like my camera so if it was raining the kind of stair-rods rain that it often did, my camera stayed safely in the dry of my bag.
 Rainbow in Glenridding There were occasions though when the sun made an all too brief appearance and my camera would be out like a shot. One such instance was when we were out driving back to our cottage in Ambleside and had arrived at Glenridding, always a favourite place for us to stop. I told Nigel I just “HAD” to get out of the car and get a picture of the spectacular rainbow that had suddenly appeared. He left me to it and went to park up as I dashed off to take pictures.
We planned our visit to the lakes to coincide with a very special walk with Lorraine and other members of the Online Fellwalking Club. Following major surgery Lorraine has made a remarkable recovery and completed a walk to the summit of Scafell Pike in atrocious weather. How she managed to stay upright on the summit without holding onto the trig point all the time is beyond me. For various reasons a few of us decided a lower level walk that day was for us and it gave us a small taste of what those further up the fell in the gale force winds were experiencing. We were probably enjoying a very welcome soup and hot chocolate at Seathwaite Farm about the same time champagne corks were being popped on the summit, but their safe return was always on our minds.  Stockley Bridge The evening was very enjoyable too when a large group of us tucked into an excellent meal at Middle Ruddings, including Steve’s Stumpy Tart. We listened to everyone’s accounts from an unforgettable day. Strangely enough due to the poor weather I hadn’t taken my big camera on the walk and as my back was feeling quite dodgy that morning I’d not carried a back pack at all but Nigel had in his everything we needed and I did have in there a small compact camera. I really only took a few pictures that day though as we descended from Sprinkling Tarn down the Grains Gill path once the rain eased off for a short while.
One very exciting afternoon was spent meeting Jayne and Max and Ollie their dog at their house which they have been living in for just a few months now. In that short time though they have made vast changes to their garden and are turning it into a very wildlife friendly place too. They had invited a number of us to visit after the Loweswater show had been cancelled due to waterlogged ground.
Jayne and Max are very lucky and have regular visits from some delightful red squirrels encouraged by a regular supply of hazelnuts. The weather that afternoon turned out to be not too bad at all with some lengthy sunny spells so we were able to sit in their garden. All of a sudden there was great excitement when a pair of squirrels appeared, moving at great speed and chasing each other around a maple tree. Lots of clicking of cameras could be heard not just mine but they were moving so fast it was very difficult to get any shots that weren’t a blur.
One way of increasing your shutter speed is to increase the ISO setting on your camera. It can be compared to when we used to use films with different speeds in our SLRs for different lighting conditions. These days with digital cameras we are able to vary the “speed” of our cameras with the click of a button. It is the same principal that digital compact cameras use to allow shooting in poor light conditions by switching to different modes on the camera. The problem is that unless you have one of the more expensive cameras increasing the ISO to anything much above 400 runs the risk of getting what is termed noise on the picture, which is when it looks grainy.
 Squirrel looking for Hazelnuts I had been busy taking several pictures of the squirrels when I thought I’d better check what they looked like as I nearly always have my ISO set on 100. I thought shutter speed may well be a problem. The beauty of digital is that we are able to do just this and after a quick look I soon realised they were all a blur. There again those squirrels do move really quickly but I set my camera to an ISO of 400 and continued taking some shots. All of a sudden the pair of them stopped and posed in a beautiful way at the top of the tree they had been chasing each other all over. After taking a few shots I thought I’d nothing to lose by moving quietly over a bit closer trying to hide behind a pile of brushwood left conveniently there from where Jayne and Max had been removing several of the overgrown Leylandii trees. I managed to take a few more shots before they had had enough of entertaining us and were off in a flash. Later that afternoon a different squirrel visited and showed us just how he gets the hazelnuts from the feeder. Luckily this time the sun was just about shining which showed up the squirrel’s colouring beautifully. I would love to spend some time hiding in Jayne’s garden as I’m certain it would be possible to get some really decent shots.
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