It’s time for another post about the area around where we live (although to be fair I’ve posted quite a few of those). This one dates back to pre-Covid times, when we had not long moved to the area and were exploring the greenery to which we’d relocated.
Devil’s Dyke is a spot on the South Downs, a little further along the South Downs Way than we explored on our previous visit. Technically Devil’s Dyke is the valley, despite the car park and pub of the same name being on top of the hill. The spot is popular with hang gliders, and indeed that was the first thing that greeted us when we arrived.
There were, it must be said, quite a few of them,
As well as the hang gliders, there were a few spectators too.
It is clearly a nice scenic spot for flying. The South Downs makes for a very pretty backdrop.
Although at other times the blue sky made for a contrast to the bright colours of the sails. Or parachutes? You know what I mean.
From our vantage point it was weird to be occasionally looking down on the flying people.
From this spot we could also see the sea, and the nearby offshore wind farm.
We decided to take a stroll along the South Downs Way. This being pre-covid we didn’t have a small child to keep interested.
I soon came across a couple enjoying the view. I snapped a quick photo of them enjoying the moment.
The first gate we came to was well-weathered and, as you may know, I like that sort of thing.
On the other side of the gate we found ourselves in Windows Desktop territory.
In one of the divots there was a couple of little farm huts.
As we wandered I got a different angle on it. And also, apparently, some cows escaped.
When some clouds rolled over everything seemed even more Windows XP-like.
In some of the hedgerows we found some wildlife, specifically some lovely brown butterflies which I’m sure someone knows the name of.
Looks like I was accidentally still shooting at f/8 from the landscapes (or possibly to try to get both the butterflies in the top shot both in focus). I fixed that for this last butterfly shot.
There were also some poppies. Or at least things that looked like poppies. For this first photo, I desaturated the colours other than red to bring them out a little more.
For this one I left all the other colours in, but I think I tweaked the red a bit. It was a bit washed out in the sun.
We sat down for lunch, and were greeted by another bit of wildlife: a snail decided to climb up onto my leg and say hello. I broke out my 100mm macro lens for that one.
As we sat a little bird also came by, and landed on a fence post, and helpfully stayed still enough for a little while for me to get some closeups with my telephoto.
As we continued our walk, we passed under some power lines. I paused to take a shot of one of the rusty pylons.
Which brings me on to one of my frequent problems on this site, which is that photograph sets from walks such as this often just… stop. I rarely know when I’m taking photos when any photo I take is the last, which means I don’t always have a good picture to land the ending of a post on.
Which is why this post about the countryside just ends on a rusty electricity pylon.
Sorry.
Well, you can have a gallery, if you want one.
Creative Splurges 