Kimmeridge again
Aug. 21st, 2022 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puddlesharkI was so disappointed by last week's landscape shots taken at Kimmeridge that I returned to Kimmeridge today, with a different lens on the camera and a graduated ND filter, to see if I could manage some better shots.
Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge. "Clavell Tower was built in about 1830 by Reverend John Richards Clavell of Smedmore House as an observatory and folly... Thomas Hardy... often took his first love Eliza Nicholl to Clavell Tower. He used an illustration of it in his Wessex Poems. The local Coastguards used it as a lookout until the 1930s, when it was gutted by fire. The desolate condition of Clavell Tower was the inspiration behind Baroness P. D. James's prize winning 1975 novel 'The Black Tower'." en.wikipedia
Until 2006, the Tower actually stood right on the edge of the cliffs, in imminent peril of disappearing with the next landslip. But in the best traditions of folly, the sum of £900,000 was raised to dismantle it stone by numbered stone, and re-erect it 25 metres further inland. It's now a Landmark Trust holiday cottage.
Kimmeridge village & Clavell Tower. Kimmeridge is a pretty village. Lots of thatched stone cottages. But it's nearly impossible to photograph those cottages -too many cars parked on the pavement. And in summer the village is busy with holiday traffic, with cars having to drive on the pavement to pass cars coming the other way along the narrow lane.
Early morning. Ranks of grey cloud hanging over the hills and the sea, but the rain holding off for now. Parked the car in the little disused quarry on the hill above Kimmeridge village, alongside the overnight campers - retired couples in small campervans, rock climbers in battered old vans - and set off along the ridge, through the parched landscape. Stubblefields, fields of tall yellow grass. Ripe blackberries on the tangle of brambles lining the path. Dry umbellifers, gone to seed. Nothing in flower along the way except the field bindweed.
No grass in the sheep pastures. Poor sheep.
Cloudscape. Buzzards and ravens soaring over the hills. One kestrel mobbing another, down in the valley - maybe an adult driving off a juvenile.
On the hilltop, the path divides. One way carrying on along the high ground above the coast towards Tyneham, the other way branching off down into the valley towards the village of Steeple.
Path down to Steeple.
Steeple church (which does not have a steeple).
But I wasn't heading for Steeple - it's a long climb back up. Instead took a little footpath which plunges down the other side of the hill back towards Kimmeridge, and then meanders along the field margins back to the village.
Field margin path. Fortunately for me, if not for the fields, everything soon dried out after last week's rain, and I was walking on nice soft path of dry clay granules. The valley is all Kimmeridge Clay, which is legendary for its slipperiness in wet conditions.
Views back down towards the village:
Smedmore House and, in the distance, the coastguard cottages on St Aldhelm's Head. And on the horizon, faint, a ship that might be the MV Barfleur on her way to Cherbourg.
The little church of St Nicholas, mostly rebuilt in the 19th century, and without a tower. The footpath passes through the churchyard and heads back up through the fields to the disused quarry.
Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge. "Clavell Tower was built in about 1830 by Reverend John Richards Clavell of Smedmore House as an observatory and folly... Thomas Hardy... often took his first love Eliza Nicholl to Clavell Tower. He used an illustration of it in his Wessex Poems. The local Coastguards used it as a lookout until the 1930s, when it was gutted by fire. The desolate condition of Clavell Tower was the inspiration behind Baroness P. D. James's prize winning 1975 novel 'The Black Tower'." en.wikipedia
Until 2006, the Tower actually stood right on the edge of the cliffs, in imminent peril of disappearing with the next landslip. But in the best traditions of folly, the sum of £900,000 was raised to dismantle it stone by numbered stone, and re-erect it 25 metres further inland. It's now a Landmark Trust holiday cottage.
Kimmeridge village & Clavell Tower. Kimmeridge is a pretty village. Lots of thatched stone cottages. But it's nearly impossible to photograph those cottages -too many cars parked on the pavement. And in summer the village is busy with holiday traffic, with cars having to drive on the pavement to pass cars coming the other way along the narrow lane.
Early morning. Ranks of grey cloud hanging over the hills and the sea, but the rain holding off for now. Parked the car in the little disused quarry on the hill above Kimmeridge village, alongside the overnight campers - retired couples in small campervans, rock climbers in battered old vans - and set off along the ridge, through the parched landscape. Stubblefields, fields of tall yellow grass. Ripe blackberries on the tangle of brambles lining the path. Dry umbellifers, gone to seed. Nothing in flower along the way except the field bindweed.
No grass in the sheep pastures. Poor sheep.
Cloudscape. Buzzards and ravens soaring over the hills. One kestrel mobbing another, down in the valley - maybe an adult driving off a juvenile.
On the hilltop, the path divides. One way carrying on along the high ground above the coast towards Tyneham, the other way branching off down into the valley towards the village of Steeple.
Path down to Steeple.
Steeple church (which does not have a steeple).
But I wasn't heading for Steeple - it's a long climb back up. Instead took a little footpath which plunges down the other side of the hill back towards Kimmeridge, and then meanders along the field margins back to the village.
Field margin path. Fortunately for me, if not for the fields, everything soon dried out after last week's rain, and I was walking on nice soft path of dry clay granules. The valley is all Kimmeridge Clay, which is legendary for its slipperiness in wet conditions.
Views back down towards the village:
Smedmore House and, in the distance, the coastguard cottages on St Aldhelm's Head. And on the horizon, faint, a ship that might be the MV Barfleur on her way to Cherbourg.
The little church of St Nicholas, mostly rebuilt in the 19th century, and without a tower. The footpath passes through the churchyard and heads back up through the fields to the disused quarry.
