I’ve been out and about this month taking photos. While most people like to snap a good view or a nice sunset, with me it’s rocks. This can lead to some strange moments. A man walking his dog near Allerston stopped to watch me pointing my tripod and camera at a stone wall. ‘Grand day,’ he said, but he probably meant ‘What on earth are you doing?’
Last week there was a lovely forecast for the evening hours, so I set off for Sutton Bank with a boot full of camera, a banana for my tea, and a head full of optimism. Just past Helmsley a bank of grey cloud started to fill the western horizon. ‘Where’s that come from?’ I wondered and I wasn’t the only one. Several farmers were out turning an early hay cut, looking to the skies and scratching their heads.
Undeterred I ploughed on. I parked near a spot called Dialstone, loaded up and walked up to the Cleveland Way at Boltby. The sudden view across the Vale of York was spectacular. Here you’re standing on the top of the Middle Jurassic looking down to Triassic rocks on the valley floor 110 feet below. The escarpment below was gouged by massive ice sheets travelling south, gouging and ripping through the rocks and leaving a great inland cliff.
Unfortunately the bank of grey cloud was turning nasty – I watched the rain over Thirsk and cursed the BBC Weather website – the whole of England was supposed to be dry. I figured I had around half an hour. I turned north along the clifftop for a few hundred yards then ducked down into Boltby quarry, where layers of Middle Jurassic grit are exposed. I just had time to put up my tripod and get snapping when the first drops started to fall. I kept going until the lens started getting spotty, packed up and marched back towards the car. I soon discovered that the rain was being thrown horizontal by a strong wind; by the time I got back I was drenched.
Next day I downloaded the photos onto my computer expecting the worst, but surprise, surprise they were really rather lovely – if you like photos of wet rocks, which of course we all do.