stories
Corfe Castle
Awoke before the alarms, strange that never seems to happen on a work day. quickly dressed and swigged a caffeine hit then loaded the car with the kit hoping I haven’t forgotten anything. 170miles to go TomTom says should arrive at Corfe Castle at 9am but with M25, M3 & M27 traffic not sure if that means today or tomorrow.
Unbelievable journey, 8am no delays and only 70 miles to go, so time to stop for an Olympic breakfast at the Little Chef which, at nearly £9, tasted surprisingly good since Heston Blumenthal has ramped up the menu and I could surf the net on my Iphone using the free Wi-Fi whilst waiting for the Polish waitresses to dish up
Arrived at the National Trust car park by Corfe Castle on schedule at around 9.30am and visited the information hut for some local knowledge of how to get up the 300 feet West Hill to reccy the place for the planned sunrise shot. Across the road, down the track for ½ mile, turn right through the gates and follow the path – sounded simple, so back to the car to change into trekking gear and off I set .
After passing through the gates, I followed the path which seemed to be doubling back to whence I came but continued undeterred until I came to another path which still seemed to be going along instead of “up” so I took the decision to go off piste and to make my way up following the edge of a barbed wire fence. Oh how I wish I had bought along a machete to hack my way through the gorse bushes, only God knows how I’m going to do this again in the dark tomorrow morning. After half an hour’s ascent trough the Amazon I finally arrived near the summit only to find I am the wrong side of the fence so testicles duly protected I somehow managed to traverse to the other side.
What an absolutely fantastic view, clear blue sky I can see for miles and the castle looks scenic from up here. Checked on sun chart for exact position of the easterly sunrise for December and looked around for the best vantage point for the sun up picture. It is nice low grass up here and much to my surprise a nice grassy path leading back down was on the other side of the summit so that will make the trek lot easier in the morning darkness avoiding the gorse ridden path. It’s mid day now and off to Kimmeridge to take a sunset shot of the ledges and Cavells Tower. I’ll describe that experience in another blog.
Up at 6am and readied myself for the planned Corfe Castle sun rise due at 7.57am. The weather looks ideal with fog supposedly lifting by 9am and very cold (minus 4 according to the car thermometer) I scraped away an inch thick layer of ice from the windscreen, Motored off and parked up 20 minutes later at the NT car park again setting off for the summit suitably attired in arctic style clothing and torch.
Piece of cake up this newly discovered path, steep but much better than hacking through the gorse (a bit slippy on the frost even though I have super treaded boots) reached the top and checked the time, 7am. An hour to go to sunrise and a glow just appearing on the horizon with a lovely layer of fog around the castle. Found my pole position reccy’d out yesterday, set up tripod and camera to allow the lens to acclimatise to the cold
Camera settings checked,- ISO 100, F/16 ,AV, RAW, mirror lock up, Focus set to AE button, one shot. Played around with fine tuning composition and took a meter reading which showed 3 stops of dynamic range so on with a 9ND Lee grad filter and fired off a couple of test exposures to check.
7.15 am and the horizon glow getting bigger but the castle is still too dark to see any details in the shadows so wait another 5 minutes. Time to reflect in the peace and tranquillity of the moment listening to Russell Watson’s Nella fantasia on my iphone's loudspeaker.
Over the course of the next half hour I captured some lovely shots ranging from the mystic drifting layers of fog around the castle to the sun popping up above the horizon………. I love this game.