Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

Easter usually isn’t the time of year that you would usually want to be in the Lakes but for personal reasons we were making the trip anyway. My parents have a caravan just outside Windemere and we drove over on Easter Sunday morning in blanket snow conditions.

The weather warnings (typically hysterical) must have put people off as there were very few cars on the road and when we went for a walk on the Sunday, we only saw a couple of people. There were so few people that myself and my Dad thought we’d risk a drive over to Blea Tarn on the Monday morning. The picture at the top was taken after spending a good 2 hours looking around a small tarn for interesting compositions (the one with the boat was the best I found). We decided to finish things off and go for a drink thinking that was it for the day. Upon leaving the pub, this view greeted us from the front door, a quick draw camera action grabbed it just as the ‘interesting’ cloud diffused the sun.

We got to Blea Tarn in sunny conditions and walked up from Dungeon Ghyll to Blea Tarn ( a 45 degree climb of only about half a mile but with 58lbs of gear it’s pretty hard on the legs).

You have to understand that Blea Tarn is a mecca for photographers for the two reasons that make Lochan Na h’Achlaise a mecca, great view, 50 yds from a parking spot. We only saw six photographers this time and the weather wasn’t great but we did have a great walk.

On the way down, the legendary Lakes weather shut everything down from a sunny day to 50m visibility in about 5 minutes.

Overall a very enjoyable trip and a couple of OK shots.