Lake District 2019

It’s been a while since we saw John Gravett at Lakeland Photographic Holidays, and we decided we should go back. We’ve done three courses with him before – one Landscape, one Black and White, and one city trip to Paris.

Previously, courses were run fully residential, but he has now sold the guest house and it’s being run as a bed and breakfast. Courses are still run out of the same place, but John now only has to deal with the Photography and the group all walk down the hill to a pub for dinner.

We arrived on Sunday evening, and had most of Monday all to ourselves before meeting up with John late afternoon for a camera surgery. John would normally be staying in the guest house with the group but there had been a mix up over bookings, and he’d got a guest in his room – he was down the hill in a different B&B!

On the Tuesday we visited Crummock Water before driving to Rannderdale to see a vast display of bluebells.

I borrowed a couple of “adulterated” lenses from John – both lenses were older than me! One had its front element reversed and gave an interesting out of focus swirl effect around the edge of the frame. The other had its rear element reversed, giving “soap bubble bokeh” in the out of focus areas.

Wednesday we started at Ashness Landing Stage on Derwentwater, and then went up to Ashness viewpoint ending at Watendlath. This was a day we’d done before on our first visit to John, and it was good to do it again with improved skills! I had fun playing with a Tilt Shift lens on Ashness Bridge.

The last day of the course, Thursday, we started at Penny Rock Wood on Grasmere and then we relocated to White Moss Common and walked around part of Rydal Water before visiting Rydal Cave.

On our way home, we stopped off at Pooley Bridge on Ullswater and took some photos of the boathouse. We then drove through to Lowther Castle and Gardens to see the ruin and have tea and cake.

We had a great week, and will hope to go again soon!