Valebridge Pond

It was relatively nice easy going to begin with. The first big challenge was the short stretch of the walk that required walking along a main road with no footpath. Luckily it was a pretty short stretch. The next challenge was finding the footpath from this road, that required me wandering about in the roadside overgrowth until I found the gate. The path passed under a short little viaduct on the Brighton Main Line. The viaduct looks of a similar design to the Ouse Valley Viaduct a bit further north, which I have still yet to properly explore.

Valebridge pond itself is just a short walk from this spot, sitting at the northern end of the Bedelands Farm Local Nature Reserve.

I randomly encountered a woman, new to the local area, who was interested in knowing good spots for nature photography. Having only just arrived, and visiting this place for the first time, I could only offer so much advice – and besides, I had packed for landscapes, not wildlife, and had left my telephoto at home. She did, however, recommend a shady spot for photographing the pond, which I quickly made use of. It was immediately apparent that a wider angle was in order, so I switched to my wide lens.

Given the shade, and my desire to use the posts in the foreground as a framing element, I started using bracketed exposures to make some HDR edits.

The water was wonderfully still and calm. This would not do. I grabbed a small acorn from the ground and threw it into the water to get a ripple on the surface.

I shifted a little to make the electricity pylon in the distance a bit more of a focal point. An odd choice I admit, as it was a bit out of place for a natural landscape, but since it was there I might as well make use of it.

It was somewhere around this point that I dropped my lens cap in the drink. Luckily it landed on some sticks and didn’t sink, so it was easily recovered. I still made sure it had dried out nicely before putting it back on my lens. Thankfully it was a warm day.

I took a shot more focussed on the pylon with less surroundings before I moved on.

I walked around the area some more. Valebridge Pond drains off into the surrounding area, which also looked a bit idyllic with a tree fallen across the water.

I still often struggle with getting results I’m happy with when shooting woody glades in sunny conditions. I never seem to quite get a balance right of exposure and colour, and the greens end up washed out. I think I’ve not done too badly this time, thanks to shooting HDR and using a suitable preset.

I wandered still, further into the nature reserve and away from the pond that gave this post its title. I found a spot with a healthy population of bees and butterflies. Ever a lazy photographer, I figured I’d use my 14-35mm lens, which can focus pretty closely and, crucially, was already attached to my camera, instead of swapping to my macro. Despite this, the wildlife still managed to get away. I took a shot of one of the flowers anyway.

In hindsight, I should have been paying closer attention and not shot at f/8, but hey-ho.

Nearby there was a large field of wildflowers of some sort.

The walk I had planned out was for the most part a loop, save for a tail at the end where I inevitably doubled back on myself. I continued on, beginning the return back towards home. The return portion of the walk took me across a railway foot crossing. I don’t see these that often, more used to bridges or tunnels or even a proper level crossing, so I was interested in using it. It crossed the Brighton Main Line, an altogether busier stretch of railway than the Bluebell Railway, and the trains move quite a lick faster too – up to 90mph, rather than the comparatively pedestrian 25mph of a heritage line.

The crossing did, however, offer the opportunity to photograph some trains in a fashion I normally reserve for ones running on coal and water.

Trains are every few minutes on this busy part of the network, so although I took a shot of the line as I crossed it, I did so without pausing or even looking at what I was shooting. It was not so crooked it couldn’t be fixed in post, and far riskier than taking a similar sort of shot on a heritage line.

From the other side of the line I waited for a few more services to go past for photographic purposes before moving on. The red livery of the Gatwick Express trains added a nice contrasting dash of colour.

After flirting briefly with another main road, I was soon back in the countryside, following an ancient bridleway through some woods and farmland. Eventually, after a small wrong turn, I was back traipsing through some woods proper. I soon came across an open area clearly used for play, as there was a rudimentary tree swing.

The other thing that caught my eye here was this tree, a branch of which had apparently had a change of heart about which direction it was growing in and decided to turn around.

This part of the return walk ran by a stream, which occasionally poked up in photogenic ways.

The walk back from this part was a bit interesting. The app I was using certainly implied a clear path, but at some points I was taking noticeable detours from the route laid out, and other times I was clearly just wandering through a wood in what seemed to be generally the right direction. The shot below shows just how approximate the route was – and also the bit where I briefly went the wrong way, in the bottom right.

Soon I was back home, and before lunch too, apparently proving that should I so choose, I could take a morning off work for a 5-mile hike and still be back in time to work in the afternoon. That said, it was a walk that definitely might prove too much for a small child for now – and with a few low branches so travelling on my shoulders will be challenging in places. Nevertheless, it’s a good reminder that we have plenty of nice country walks on our doorstep.

As always, I’ve included a few extra shots in the gallery below.