Helen Stephenson's Derbyshire Break Pictures - December, 2005 - Monsal Head

Monsal Head's best known landmark is probably the Monsal Head Viaduct. This no longer carries railway traffic, but has been incorporated into local walking trails, and therefore continues to be used and enjoyed by many people.

Here are three views of the Monsal Head Viaduct in the context of the surrounding landscape. The view on the left looks down Monsal Dale, the central view looks up Upper Dale, and the River Wye can be seen wending its way through both pictures. I've put in another close-up of the viaduct on the right, complete with some hardy walkers, out enjoying the last of the light on a December afternoon.

These pictures were all taken with the aid of a tripod, as the light levels were dropping rapidly. I think the exposure times are under a second (I could go back and check the EXIF data to be sure) but they're not far under a second. The next picture shows the view looking back along Upper Dale towards Cressbrook and it was getting very hazy in the distance. I've tried to correct it in PhotoShop and got a bit of a blue haze in the far distance. I've put the picture up anyway, as I don't have a better one of this view.

The last three pictures look down into the near distance. The River Wye features in all of them. Note the light's on in the farmhouse window in one of these pictures.

A December afternoon doesn't stay warm once the sun's gone down, and Monsal Head is quite exposed, so it was quite a cold exercise taking these pictures. I was enjoying it so much that I didn't particularly notice the cold, but Stephen did, and came along and announced that he was cold, placing his hand over mine to illustrate his point. It backfired a little bit, though, as his hands turned out to be vastly warmer than mine!

Even I eventually agreed that it was cold and packed away my incredibly cold aluminium tripod and retreated to our nice warm car to start the journey back south, as our break in Derbyshire ended with our stop at Monsal Head.

I hope you've enjoyed looking at these pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.