The Peak District in bloom
I love the Peak District! With a short(ish) drive of just over 3 hours from Suffolk, I can be in a dramatic and totally different landscape to the local spots in my beloved flatlands of East Anglia. I particularly look forward to visiting the Peak in late summer when the heather is in bloom. At this time of year, huge swathes of the hills and moors are carpeted in glorious shades of pink and purple, splashed by the lush greens of bracken and the gold of grasses.
There are several places closer to home where I can and do photograph heather, notably the lowland heaths at Dunwich & Westleton on the Suffolk coast and Roydon Common in Norfolk. These areas of lowland heath sprinkled with silver birch and pine trees are all beautiful, although sadly Dunwich Heath in particular has suffered terribly from last summer’s drought, but what I love about the Peak District is the way the heather grows in and around the rocks along the gritstone edges and tors where the rugged textures of the weathered grey rocks provide the perfect foil for the soft pink and purple flowers.
I’m lucky to get to spend a few days in the Peak District every summer (and then again in autumn), running workshops and if time allows exploring new locations and indulging in my own photography. This year I was trialing a longer 4 day residential workshop, based as always at the Plough Inn in Hathersage, the idea being that the extra day would allow us time to shoot more locations or re-visit any that were affected by the weather (even in summer the weather is ‘changeable’).
Four days of very early starts and days spent walking up hills was tiring but (apart from the minibus breaking down on the way to the workshop, leaving me stranded in a car park in Chesterfield) everything went pretty much according to plan and thanks to a great workshop group we had a lot of fun along the way!
Below is a gallery with a small selection of images from this year’s workshop, I hope you enjoy them. I have just added next year’s workshop dates so if you would like to join me you can book here
