Helen Stephenson's Derbyshire Break Pictures - December, 2005 - Millers Dale

We aren't a pair of early risers, but on the December morning when I took these pictures, there was still frost where the sun hadn't reached by the time of the morning when we were about. We were lucky with the weather that day: we got beautiful pictures with blue skies, and then as we watched, a weather front came across and the sky clouded over, but by then, we had our pictures.

Just outside Cressbrook, you can see the chimney from an old mine.

This is just one of many pictures I took which shows the bright green grass in the sunlight, the frost in the shadows; and the countryside rolling back into the misty distance.

I liked this view with the stone walls in the foreground and the smoke from the cement works drifting across the pale blue sky. Some would say that the cement works are a blot on the landscape, but I think they add something to this picture.

Here we have stone walls in the foreground and scenery which recedes into mistiness in the distance. The cement works features on one picture, and you can see the difference in the sky from the earlier picture as the weather started to change. Note the interesting table shaped hill in the picture on the right.

I've zoomed in close for a view of cattle grazing in a field bordered by stone walls.

Here's another picture featuring the hill that is almost table-topped.

These two pictures show how frosty is was where the sun hadn't yet reached. The more distant view on the left has a little bit of green on the skyline where the frost has already burnt off.

Here are more views of green fields, stone walls, and misty blue distances.

That brings me to my final two pictures, which are among my favourites from our walk along the Litton Road. The frost can be clearly seen in the shadows cast by the stone walls in the close-up view on the left, while the view on the right juxtaposes the mostly green foreground onto the frosty hillsides behind.