The rural scenes are evocative, but they seem to have a rather cool cast.

Great set. I wonder if cropping the second in half might emphasise the path and lone tree?
The two entwined trees are incredible. One is normally taught to prune branches so they don't rub against each other and point in different directions. This ain't that!
'Getting Closer' is very dramatic, very foreboding.
And I like this path.

Took a quick look at that video and I think it was taken the same year that I visited. Yeah, it's a very sad story. I've read a couple of books about the place, but the feeling of sadness and loss really hits home when you walk amongst the ruins (well, that and the rotten fish smell that permeates the mud) and find trivial things such as bits of fine broken crockery in the mud that once formed small parts of peoples lives there. I posted a set of images at the time of my visit on DPR, but here is that set along with a couple of bonus shots...

Mardale (2021)

All images taken with the Olympus E-M1 MKII + 12-100 f/4, processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 21.

Overview

We approached from the neighbouring valley of Swindale, following the old coffin route that would have been used to carry the dead across the separating fells and away to the church at Shap. This was the view presented to us as we first saw the depleted waters of Haweswater and the extent of the long submerged village that was now visible.

Once A Road To Somewhere

This is the remains of one of the tracks through the village.

The View Towards Harter Fell

This is the view looking up the lake towards the fells at its head from the track seen in the previous image.

Shattered Lives

This stump stands beside the ruins of the village church. There were fragments of fine china and other pottery all over the place which people had collected and deposited in the hollow of this stump.

Squally Showers

The weather on this particular visit was very variable, with regular showers running through the valley. This is looking across the exposed peninsula on the right hand side of the first picture. The church once stood to the left of the where the people are standing.

Anaerobic

I suspect this rocky outcrop was once covered with soil, but that's long been washed away leaving the bleached root structure as the only evidence there was once a tree here.

The Packhorse Bridge

It's barely visible as it's still largely submerged, but this is a packhorse bridge crossing the little river that ran down from Blea Water and Small Water tarn in the hills above.

One Last Look

Looking back at the ruins as we headed back to Swindale. The tree stumps are around the brown part where the peninsula attaches to The Rigg (the forested part intruding on the left of the frame).

After my visit I started looking for old pictures of the area, finding and purchasing this period hand coloured 6x6cm glass slide on Ebay. I've scanned it and cleaned it up quite a bit, I did debate trying to clean the colouring off with alcohol to restore it to the original black and white image, but eventually decided against it. It shows the area as it looked in its heyday and features the Dun Bull Hotel with its adjacent tennis courts.

I don't have an exact comparison image, but this is one I shot from the corpse road that shows a similar area. Amazingly the tennis court is still quite clearly there (the flat rectangle beside the hotel and towards the bottom right of the next picture). This puzzled us when we were down there as we had no idea it was a tennis court, just a surprisingly flat and smooth area amongst the devastation.

Weather looks familiar 😏
The Tiny Tarn is a very contemplative shot.

What a sad story. The last two make for a really interesting comparison. The distant slopes in the earlier one seem to have less vegetation than now. Not what I would have expected. Any idea when the it was taken?

Not sure. The valley was flooded in the 1930's and that format of slide was common in the early 1900's, so you'd be looking at some time between 1900 and 1930ish I guess. Bear in mind, the period slide is hand coloured, so the hillside was just grey tones and the artist who painted it and may not have been familiar with the subject or area probably thought it was just a rocky surface and didn't particularly try to colour it. Here's a more detailed crop of Harter Fell.

It would be nice to find the viewpoint from the original image and take a shot with the medium format camera, although to be fair, the E-M1 MKII is probably giving that slide a run for its money in terms of resolution.

Here's a photo of the slide itself, alongside a few other items in my collection. I hastily put this together show some of the different old photographic formats, ranging from half plate (4¾ × 6½" original negative) on the left, followed by quarter plate (3¼ × 4¼" original negative), the Mardale slide 2¼ x 2¼" (hand coloured positive copy in an 83mm mount) and good old 35mm.

Are you going to be near Arezzo again?

As always I enjoyed your illustrated walk. You have some marvellous places near to where you live.

The landscape shot is quite heavily altered in PP, perhaps, to much, with a lot of lightening and darkening of selected areas in Capture 1. The house shot is almost out of camera.

Yes, and also a week near San Gimignano.

Is there much to see from the top? It doesn't look much of a climb from the path you were on, but I didn't feel it would be worth the effort when I was there. I've yet to make a return visit to Dufton after the road closure disaster the last time, but when I do, I think I'll head out onto the fells a little further South from here, assuming you can see Dufton Pike and Knock Pike from an elevated position, that might make for an interesting composition.

I'd be tempted to try cropping this a little, although just enough to remove the large brown area at the bottom.

That's a fantastic entangled tree.

They don't build 'em like that anymore. I wonder how long that will last before it collapses completely?

An enjoyable wander around a lovely location. In fact, you have just reminded me that I need to revisit it myself.

I enjoyed this low key set of pictures. The tree shapes and that roof are my favourites.

Tradition meets modernity. Nice one.

Dunno yet... haven't made it up there. It's not much of a climb, but this was just an afternoon escape from grandaughter minding and we were just feeling lazy - and cold! I've previously followed the track up past the old mines and looped back along Tarn Sike round to High Cup Nick. For a view along the scarp you'd have to follow some of the old mining tracks nearer to the edge. It might be worth it in the right conditions as the line of 'Pikes' makes an interesting landscape feature.

You're probably right. The intention was to include the second tree as a complement, but it doesnt really show up. Need to process or crop.

I did plan this route some time ago, but never got round to doing it.

There are no paths shown on the OS maps linking High Cup Nick to the mine valley, so I've improvised across the tops, although the threat of shake holes in the area does make me wonder if that's a bad idea as those things aren't to be messed with. Mind you, this is about 9 miles and, as I'm mostly managing little more than 4 to 6 mile hikes at the moment, it's probably a moot point.

[edit] - I've just located Tarn Sike on the map and although there's no path shown on the OS map, I can clearly see the track linking it to High Cup Nick on the satellite view, so I may rework that and see if it's a viable route (poor cardio fitness aside).

Of course, looking a little further afield, Murton Pike might be the best vantage point to get a good shot of the other two, but then, that begs the question of where to go to get all three pikes in a row? (without resorting to using a drone, as that would be cheating)

Wow, I hadn't noticed the 2nd tree. Yeah, knowing that's there the composition makes more sense. It's a pity the light isn't playing ball and pulling that out for you, it's almost invisible unless you know it's there.

That's right, there's a vague trace of a path from the far end of Great Rundale Tarn - a route used by shooting carts I think - but it would be very boggy in wet conditions. I remember thinking '...glad it's been dry for the last few weeks...'

Foggy
Spent today morning 3 hours in attempts to navigate my way in fog... First nothing on sea could be seen, only hint of passing ships were sounds of their foghorns. Later when fog rose a bit the sea turned into silver layer.

What a picturesque place. Not. But I guess food there is cheap and very nutritious...

My favorite here, the light and long shadows make it interesting.

Love this shot, it's almost like painting. Only thing to pick is missing part of tree...

These are my favorites, nicely spotted.

Yeah, I was annoyed I'd cut that branch off too. IIRC, the reason is there was something on the horizon I didn't want to include, so I framed it to cut that off, not realising I'd lost a little bit of the tree in the process because it was hidden in the shadows through the viewfinder.

Looking back through the images I took on the day, there's an earlier shot that was wider but taken from a slightly different angle. I'd ignored it initially because it included an unwanted tree on the far right of the image, but it did include more of the foreground, so I've been able to crop it and maintain a 3:2 aspect ratio rather than resorting to the less pleasing 16:9 crop of the earlier image.

First and last for me. Wonderful sense of mystery in this set.

Silver Beach, on the southern side of Botany Bay.

The shutter speed was a bit too slow so there is a bit of blur with the birds, but I was pleased with the composition.

65:24 crop