St John’s Chapel
We started this circular walk at the namesake church of the town. Roughly ///product.rucksack.hiker on what3words. There is parking just off the main road a little before you head into the town.
There are several walks in the area that looked appealing to us. As we had the little ones in tow we did one of the shorter ones. It took us up into the hills above the village, along to Daddry Shield via the Greenlaws Mine, and then back to St John’s Chapel along the Weardale Way.
St John’s Chapel, North Pennines AONB, County Durham
An old farmhouse at St John’s Chapel, North Pennines AONB, County Durham
As you can probably see by the above image there was still plenty of autumn colour on the walk. I imagine unless we keep heading south for walks, the best of that is probably behind us for this year. This walk also had an abundance of old rural buildings, something that always leaves me feeling in my element.
Waterfall near to St John’s Chapel, North Pennines AONB, County Durham
As you follow along the river there are a series of small waterfalls, none as spectacular as the one I posted about recently at Ashgill, but still very picturesque none-the-less. You eventually reach a bridge, which you cross and then head up into some woodland, following the path through it and up onto the hills above.
During this stretch of the walk we got some spectacular light, and I got distracted by taking portraits.
Climbing the path out of the woodlands near to St John’s Chapel, North Pennines AONB, County Durham
I took several portraits which I adored, including one where my son appeared to be doing his best Gandalf “You shall not pass” impression with a branch he’d tried to use as a walking stick, but the above is my favourite. I’d hung back to let the little ones get ahead to get a photo of them going up the stairs, and just caught my daughter looking back to see why my wife and I were no longer keeping up.
With my landscape I’d normally always ensure I didn’t have any blown out highlights, and the highlights behind the trees are probably recoverable even on my old X-T3, but I liked the fact that it gives a feeling of atmosphere whilst at the same time tidying up some of the messes of the branches. The old mk1 35mm f1.4 from Fujifilm is often hailed as their best APSC lens because of the character the lens brings, but I think the f2wr that this was taken on is underrated in that regard.
Sheep on the fells above the woodland at St John’s Chapel, North Pennines AONB, County Durham
Photographically I think the above image is average at best, I think the sheep just made for a cute subject….
Farmhouse in the North Pennines AONB, County Durham
Following the wall across the field from the treeline takes you past this farmhouse, when you hit the track you take a right and head up the hill to join a slightly larger track. When we joined that initial track it was rather boggy, combined with how sharp the incline was made this section one of the worst on the walk. You are following the wall up the hill that you can see going past the farmhouse in this picture, but this image does not do justice as to how steep that short climb felt, especially to the little legs we had with us.
I do like the photo though. The cloud was starting to break, allowing the light to be dappled on the landscape, and of course it has my two favourite subjects in one image, farm buildings and sheep…
When the small track met the larger one, we turned left and headed down the hill towards Daddry Shield. At a point that looked like nothing more than a random field (we were thankful for paper maps at that point!) we turned and headed along to the Greenlaws Mine.
I don’t know if it’s just because of stumbling across Groverake Mine in the North Pennines last year, but I had this built up in my head. This left getting to the mine a little anticlimactic. The children enjoyed going through the tunnel in the picture above (left) as if it was a mineshaft, I however did not like how the walls of that tunnel were starting to bulge…
Most of the mine when you get through the tunnel is fenced off. I may have explored around the stream more if the children weren’t with us, but there was quite a drop down to it, leaving the only building visible the old mine shop, as per the picture above (right). An image of the whole building is in the gallery at the bottom of the page.
Dappled light hitting the rural houses near to Daddry Shield.
As we returned to the track down to Daddry Shield, the light on the hills opposite was beginning to put on a show. It was fleeting and ended almost as quickly as it began. I had maybe 3 minutes of dappled light where I was able to start picking out buildings (although I wasted about the first minute of that trying to get my lenses changed to the 55-200 because I didn’t have it handy). In truth I probably missed the best of it.
As we continued down the track and neared the villages, we started to get pops of autumnal colour again. From here we walked along to the River Wear and followed it back to St John’s Chapel. I did take more photos, but between busier backgrounds from that side of the village, and the rain that started there weren’t any that I was truly happy with from that section of the walk. Some examples of the scenery are in the last gallery however.
There is a further selection of images below in a gallery format from our wander along this circular geo-trail hiking route.
If you would like to see more of my landscape work, moving forward most of the images will be here in blog format, but I will notify of new entries on my Instagram page for landscapes - @photog.righ
If you are interested in following my portrait and product work, links to my instagram and twitter for those accounts are just below at the bottom of this page
