Sedbergh, Yorkshire Dales, Summer
It’s summer! Y’know what that means? Wild flower meadows.
We’re rather fortunate to live where we do, sandwiched between abundant nature. You can take your pick of beautiful places to see wildflower summer meadows. A particular favourite is Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales.
But I can also recommend the Sedbergh meadows underneath the Howgills.
We usually start this hike from Sedbergh town itself, but this time we started from Straight Bridge, walking away rather than into the sun.
Sedbergh is pretty enough anyway, but in the summer it becomes positively idyllic. And the meadows around the town were filled with wildflowers.
All photos taken on my Sony α7ii using my Sony 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS zoom and Rokinon 14mm f2.8 ED AS IF UMC prime lenses. RAWs developed in Lightroom, edited in Photomatix and Photoshop.
Sedbergh, Yorkshire Dales, Summer by Ian Cylkowski is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Following the path alongside the River Rawthey, a beautiful field full of buttercups stopped us in our tracks.
So did these mushrooms. These are possibly Dryad’s Saddle, or Cerioporus squamosus.
A Kendal Rough Fell yow enjoying the summer sun in the meadows.
A pair of geese, following each other around the fields.
New Bridge, which is quite a funny name given that it was built in the 1700s. A lush scene framing this gorgeous structure.
There’s plenty of horses about at the moment as travellers make their way to the Appleby Horse Fair. One particularly shaggy fella posed for me in a field full of flowers, and I couldn’t say no.
After a brief pit stop and refreshment in Sedbergh town, we continued the hike. The trail circumnavigates Castlehaw and climbs up the hillside underneath the Howgills. A very dry Settlebeck Gill provides a leading line in between these gnarly old trees.
Out into the open, fields full of flowers surrounded us. Passing clouds temporarily darkened the summit of Knott, whilst sheep and their lambs happily graze on the meadows below.
Further along the trail, a field of curious bullocks idly stare at us as we made our way towards Ghyll Farm.
Just before you reach Ghyll Farm the trail narrows into a beautiful little lane, surrounded by hedgerows and old trees. It created a natural frame that I made a composition of.
Beyond Ghyll Farm, you continue southeast towards Stone Hall, a Grade II* listed building. Formerly a farmhouse, it dates from 1695.
Between Stone Hall and Ellerthwaite, the wildflower meadows just got better and better. One particular field was absolutely chock full of them. I nabbed a shot of Lisabet admiring the buttercup fields, a timeless scene.
We spotted this old tree, host to a load of bracket fungi, so I equipped my ultra-wide lens in order to make a composition of the tree, the fungi, the buttercup meadow and the Howgills. Success!
The cloud cover was beginning to thicken, but pockets of sun still broke through. A distant scene looking south towards the Dent fells made me zoom right in.
At Ellerthwaite we came across this magnificent field full of buttercups. I spotted these tracks winding through the field and waited for the sun to burst through, illuminating the field whilst the distant hills darkened under the clouds.
Beyond Buckbank the trail follows the trees above the River Rawthey back to Straight Bridge. Another beautiful meadow lined with farm tracks, with Lisabet ahead, gave me my final composition.