The Frozen Moors
I've not managed much in the way of walking with a camera this week as it's still a bit too dark by the time I finish work and the weekend weather has been rubbish, but I did manage to briefly drag myself out onto the moors last Sunday having heard reports on social media of freezing fog over Roddlesworth way, which I felt warranted investigation.
It was an effort to drag myself out of a nice warm house into freezing temperatures though, and I ended leaving myself with just an hour of daylight to play with, which was unfortunate as the conditions were rather nice and I'd have liked to explore the part of the moors I ended up on a little longer.
The unpredictable wintry conditions ruled out the supremely weather unresistant X-T50 and I didn't feel like lugging the hefty GFX kit around on this particular trip, so I ended up with the Z8+24-70 f/2.8S swinging around my neck as I trudged as far as I could in the limited time available onto the moors from the Roddlesworth side, which is the opposite side to where I live and not my usual approach.
All images taken handheld and processed from single raw files in Capture One Pro 23.
Great Hill
This is a view looking towards Great Hill as I made my way onto the moors. I'm actually stood at the side of the A675 here. From what I consider to be my side of the moors, you've got to do a bit of walking in order to get your boots onto this peaty wilderness, but from here on the eastern approach, there's a road snaking its way across it. I would have liked to omit the bit of fence in the bottom left, but I'm as close to it as I can get here, leaning very lightly against a worryingly leaning wall where the road crosses a stream. I could easily clone it out, but that's cheating right?

Frosty Tops of the Tockholes Plantation
The path from the road follows the side of the stream towards its source on the lower reaches of Great Hill. It's a gradual climb up towards Great Hill, but the boggy excuse for a path made it hard going, even in these chilly conditions, the surface wasn't frozen in many places and I was treading carefully, having once met a man on Heapey Moor who was completely covered in mud up to his waist. Apparently he'd come across this part of the moors, following the path and suddenly fell through the peat into water up to his waist. That was on a nice spring day, with these conditions, I wasn't taking any chances. Anyway, this is a view looking back towards the road (which runs just along the bottom of those trees). It's a pity I hadn't brought a longer lens as I'd have liked to fill more of the frame vertically with those frosty trees. Mind you, in this weather I wouldn't have been particularly comfortable swapping lenses.

A Frosty Fence
This is about as far as I got before turning back due to time constraints. I was hoping to reach the ruins of Pimm's farm (located beside the tree you can see in this picture), but time had run out. Also note how foggy Great Hill has become by this point, you can no longer see the summit, which was perfectly visible when I set off.
