A Walk from Castle Drogo

Somewhere near the beginning of my trip down to Devon, I made a visit to Castle Drogo. Just visible in the falling rain in the image above. I may do a post about the castle itself at some point. It’s an interesting place, but for now I’ll just say it is the last castle to be built in England (1930) and the first twentieth century building to be given to the National Trist (1974). My visit however started with a walk, The Teign Gorge Classic Circuit, to be precise. It’s 4.1 miles long and supposed to take about 2.5 hours. Not when you are carrying a medium format kit, with tripod, and making photo’s enroute me thinks! The information starts with “….includes uneven paths, steps, steep ground, unfenced drops,… stout footwear is recommended!”, just to add to the fun it was raining at the start too.

The first photo in this post, is taken from Sharp Tor, pictured above. There I was tittering on the edge with tripod et al! The photo of course doesn’t really convey the scale. Those are full grown trees down there below in the gorge, and you can just make out rain falling in the distance. Luckily that faded out and much of the walk was dry. These two images are made from the “Hunters Path”, part of the circuit. This goes into the woodland and gently drops down to Fingle Bridge.

Fingle Bridge (below) takes it’s name from Fingle Brook (above), it’s here that it flows into the River Teign. You can see by the movement of the water (above) the sort of shutter speeds I was working with here. Dull wet day, under foliage cover and using Ilford Pan-F (50 asa). I think the shot above was 8th sec. The bridge dates from the 17th century.

Crossing the river here, the walk doubles back on itself, but closely follows the river bank as it does. A few yards on an interesting tree trunk. Tricky exposure, almost pulled off!

Further still a mini beach with wet stones who’s placement caught my eye.

I’m loving the tones that I seem to be getting from my home made D23 developer. and certainly intend to continue with it. Although it’s slow, I’m quite enjoying using the Pan-F too. I think I’ll try a roll in 35mm sometime soon, if the weather holds up. I may use that as a comparison between D23 and Rodinal, but Rodinal with a twist – we’ll see! Finally the walk ends with a good old climb back up to the castle. Thankful to see the car, I threw the tripod in the boot along with the camera rucksack. Swapped my walking boots for trainers and headed off to the coffee shop!