Snowdonia trip - December

The opportunity arose at the start of December for another week away and after very little thought I decided on Snowdonia National Park, a search for accommodation on the Friday, resulted in a cottage booked up for the next day. Nic, was left at home to fend for herself and look after the cat, whilst moi, would enjoy a week with no one to please, but myself. It's a tough life.

Migneint, Snowdonia National Park

I have a reasonable overview of the Snowdonia National Park and booked a cottage in Blaenau Ffestiniog a central location and with good road access to other parts of the Snowdonia NP. There are also interesting landscapes and geology in close proximity to Blaenau Ffestiniog, these being : Ceunants, Migneint and Moelwyns. Excursion itineraries were subject to the weather and weather resilience, with a list of locations to explore and subject matter, to cherry pick from : hills, moorland, ceunantydd, geology, mosses and lichens.

Ceunant

Ceunants are the Welsh name for gorges and ravines that have been fluvially eroded into the bedrock by water draining the adjacent higher ground and possibly sub glacial drainage. One ceunant is also a Geoconservation Review site for its fluvial geomorphology. Geologists have estimated their development has taken place over millions of years.

Ceunant

The steepness of slopes and inaccessibility of ceunants to grazing herbivores means that most have ancient semi natural woodland. The high annual rainfall maintains a high humidity and an ideal habitat for the bryophytes and lichens, of the Celtic Rain forest. These fragmented woodlands are part of a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) for old sessile oak woods.

Taylor's flapwort (Mylia taylorii) 

It would be fair to state that the Migneint is an extensive area of upland bog and moorland, courtesy of the climate and elevation. It is also where ice accumulated during Quaternary glaciations and evidence of ice flow can be gauged from glaciated bedrock and the quarrying/plucking of exposed bedrock outcrops.

There are also some compelling views of the Migneint and from it.

The Moelwynion are a range of hills, overlooking Blaenau Ffestiniog, little visited by walkers, who overlook them for the hill ranges of more commanding stature. Nonetheless the views are good.

Flush lines, blanket peat and glacially scoured depressions, provide a habitat for sphagnum mosses.

Whilst bryophyte and lichen communities take advantage of bedrock outcrops and boulders.

The Snowdonia National Park is predominantly underlain by Cambrian and Ordovician aged, sedimentary, volcanic and igneous rocks, that have been weakly metamorphosed and folded during the Caledonian orogeny. Some of the rocks tell the story of explosive volcanic eruptions generating pyroclastic flows with bedding surfaces, indicating pulsed flows, ash still hot enough to weld when it settled and volcanic pyroclastic breccia.

Pyroclastic flow with planar foliation and cross bedding 

Welded tuff with fiamme in-weathered

Volcanic pyroclastic breccia

I also chanced upon bedrock outcrops with igneous intrusions of flow banded rhyolite into tuff, cut by vein quartz (segregated quartz?) and intrusive rhyolite breccia with net veins of quartz.

Some outcrops of intrusive rhyolite presented an opportunity to photograph miniature landscape with an accompanying flora of saxicolous mosses and lichens

One dawn outing, suffered from a number of unforeseen events and own goals, on the journey and at the location, that culminated in a radical change of plan. The dawn colour was good, followed by a brief window of sunlight, before the sun rose into cloud.

Overall a good trip, a mix of weather, varied subject matter and plenty of photography opportunities.

Autumn woodland - Forest of Dean and Wye Valley

With the 1st day of winter, this post is a retrospective of the autumn 2016 woodland photography, where I made a conscious decision to concentrate on the woodland of the Lower Wye Valley. Specifically the woodland growing on the steeper slopes of the upper gorge. The Lower Wye Valley is the habitat for some rare and uncommon trees. The challenge is : locating them, identifying them, finding photogenic specimens and lighting. Some species of Whitebeam are endemic to this area, the global population concentrated on crags along a few kilometres of the river Wye.

Whitebeam leaves and berries

Photographing Whitebeams, was an ignominious failure, identifying the species relied on determining subtle nuances in the morphology of the leaves and berries, I lost the will on that one. Whitebeans current habitat appears predominantly restricted to crags and their shrubby nature, proved too challenging for my idealised vision. I need to regroup and try another approach for the future.

Wild service leaves and berries

Wild Service trees, also proved equally challenging with photogenic specimens elusive.

Wild service bark

Ambitions for images of expansive views of the wooded river valley once again fell short and what I consider good lighting was used to illuminate the autumnal colour of the beech woodland on the slopes.

A wood amongst boulders of quartz conglomerate was also visited.  Harvesting operations a few years back, resulted in canopy gaps and deadwood on the ground, brambles that overran the woodland floor are being shaded out as the canopy once again closes over and saplings create an understorey.

A Scowles woodland, where I had high hopes for an image with a backdrop of autumnal beech trees never happened, the timing of my visit coincided with beech leaves having already fallen or were still green. The trip emphasised another indicator of ancient woodland, the heterogeneous rollout of autumnal colouration and leaf fall, amongst 'wild' tree populations.

The oak/beech woodland in the Dean, provided an image showing the intimate relationship between underplanted beech and oak timber trees.

A number of images were made for a couple of long term projects on decay in woodlands.

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 Only one trip coincided with autumnal mist.

And that was it until next year.

Isle of Skye - round up

The best weather day of the holiday was set aside for a trip down Glen Sligachan, Nic didn't fancy a hillwalk and the low elevation of Glen Sligachan enhances the prominence of the surrounding hills. Besides there was an opportunity for an image with early sunlight on the floor of the glen as the sun cleared the tops of the Red Hills to the south east.

It was an enjoyable walk, a stretch of the River Sligachan was explored, but the best of the early light had passed and with the Black Cuillin in close proximity, a wide angle, tilt shift lens would have been useful to preserve the true perspective.

The excursion turned into a something of a social, as a local professional landscape photographer, was met on the way and we chatted amongst other things about the current situation on Skye, which has grown to be a prime bucket list destination for landscape photographers and the photography workshop industry. Shortly after we stopped and chatted to two contractors heading down to carry out path maintenance on the slopes of Druim Hain, for the John Muir Trust. One was carrying a Hasselblad film camera and documenting the work and landscapes, with 'quality lighting' as part of a long term project, I'll look forward to viewing that body of work one day. Given the forecast of heavy showers for the afternoon, a decision was made to take advantage of the weather and change the plan, to view the Cuillins from further away.  We retraced our steps back up Glen Sligachan, as the showers started to roll in.  We then travelled to Strathaird, for southerly views of the Cuillin and Nic, could spot for marine wildlife in Loch Scavaig from elevated position.

The Camasunary track was taken, prolonged showers meant it was heads down walking and the opportunity to appreciate the geology exposures - sedimentary rocks, dykes and basalt. Nic, didn't fancy the walk to Beinn Leacach, she could scan the sea and coast for marine life adequately from Am Mam. A break in the cloud to the SW let some light through for a double rainbow. That brief window of light was the only one of the trip.

With dusk approaching and the hill fog lifting from the Cuillin, the opportunity was taken to make an image of the juxtaposition between glacially scoured rock and the periglacial landform of the Cuillin ridge.

There's something compelling about about the Black Cuillin in some weather, wreathed in hill fog and rain. I have yet to make the photograph that captures that brooding atmosphere, but the climate of Skye at least gives plenty of opportunities for practice.

The trip to Skye was an enjoyable one, a mix of weather, geology, landscapes, scenery and wildlife and a few areas/locations identified to explore in the future.

Isle of Skye - Woodland and Wildlife

After the week in Kinloch Rannoch, the following week was destined for the Isle of Skye. Nic, had a holiday bucket list of tour operators and guides, for kayaking, boat trips and wildlife watching ... Which was fine with me, as she could drop me off somewhere, whilst she went kayaking/boat tripping/wildlife watching. As always the plans were weather dependent.

After arriving at the holiday cottage, unloading and unpacking, there was enough time for an excursion. The weather was negligible wind, very low cloud, rain and a calm sea, that pointed to a wildlife excursion, which in turn threw up a candidate location in the Kyleakin Hills, that held the promise of otter spotting and coincidentally with nearby oak woodland designated as a Special Area of Conservation.

After parking up, there then followed some less than optimal map reading on my part, eventually Nic located a suitable vantage point for a wildlife watching vigil and was immediately rewarded, with an otter feeding on the shore. One pair of binoculars and two people, is never a satisfactory combination, so I went for a recce of the woods and on my return, was informed in hushed tones, that there were now two otters and clearly visible with the naked eye. A good start to the holiday, a few days of cloud and rain meant  this area was visited on further occasions and we were rewarded with more extended viewings of the two otters and also a large pod of dolphins.

 

The woodland contained older krummholz oak trees shaped by the wind and also a few wind thrown, uprooted oaks, still alive and adapting their canopy growth from their trunks horizontal orientation. It was also apparent that the woodland was regenerating, with seedlings and saplings of all the indigenous tree species present. The small downside was that the woodland grew over Torridonian sandstone, I have longed formed an opinion that Torridonian landscapes are some of more arduous to traverse and the woodland was no exception to that rule.



With the sea in close proximity, a high annual rainfall, the climate is decidedly Oceanic and the woodland appears an optimal habitat for communities of mosses, liverworts and lichens. The woodland certainly possessed an atmosphere, enhanced by autumnal colour in the canopy and field layer, rain wetted surfaces added vibrancy to the colours.



Heavy rainfall also posed problems with one excursion and streams in full spate, on a trip out to the Rubha an Dunain peninsula. The excursion was abandoned, when a safe fording point of an otherwise innocuous stream could not be found, without a tedious detour upstream and a look at the OS map indicated there was the prospect of fording a number of larger streams draining greater catchment areas. Every cloud has a silver lining though, on the return journey back to the car park, we watched a pair of white tailed eagles quartering the peninsula, before disappearing from view up into Cuillin Corries in Glen Brittle.

Heavy rainfall did ensure that waterfalls were impressive and the Black Cuillin had a certain atmospheric feel to them.

I'll cover some landscape photography and geology excursions, made in more clement weather, in the next post.