manadh – Manadh Photography

We’ve been trying to get out for weeks and go for a walk, but the weather has either not been right, or we’ve had something on.

So this makes this little snowdrop the first official photo of 2019!

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The plan for the second day was to get up, have breakfast, go to photography Ribblehead Viaduct, go to the caves, come home.

This largely went to plan… Apart from the photo the viaduct part. We drove to where the viaduct is (according to Google Maps) but it was so misty and so windy that we just turned around and went back to the cave.

Second year in a row and no Ribblehead Viaduct picture!

The cave system is quite large, and took an hour and a half or so.

Even though there were only 4 of us on the tour, I was told I wasn’t allowed to use my tripod at all (why not tell me this before we set off and I would have left it in the car? We were clearly carrying a tripod with us) so I had to do what I could.

There was another waterfall in the cave – it has been a weekend of waterfalls!

As has become a tradition, we go away for my birthday. It started when I turned 30, when everyone chipped in and we went to the Isle of Skye for 5 days. Last year we went to Malham in the Yorkshire Dales.

This year we went back to the Yorkshire Dales, but we went to Ingleton instead.
Ingleton has (a lot of other things I’m sure) a waterfall trail, and a cave system.

Even though I’d chosen it as my place to go, I didn’t really expect it to be much; there were no good pictures of the waterfall trail or caves online when I had a quick search, so my expectations were pretty low.

The week before we set off I printed out the Waterfall Trail leaflet, and was surprised when it said the walk was 2 1/2 – 4 hours.

The weather forecast looked so poor on the run up that we considered moving the booking to the weekend after, but my gut said stay with this weekend, so we did.

We drove up on Saturday morning, and as predicted, it was chucking it down with rain. By the time we got to the waterfall car park (it’s about a two hour drive). So with fingers crossed we set off on the circular walk.

It was a fair walk before we saw the first waterfall, but it was a lot bigger an more impressive than I was expecting it to be.

There was a clear path all the way around, and a places there were bridges built into the walk, so we walked right in front of the waterfalls in places.

As well as walking around the river/waterfalls there were also chunks of the walk where we were in the hills. It was a bit misty, which I love. I love winter time; the grass is an odd yellow colour and the trees are bare, and add in a bit of mist and it is just perfect.

The walk has a lot of stairs in it, and most of the walk was on rocks so it was uneven. Even though it was advertised as strenuous and we scoffed at it, it was more steps and walking than either of us expected.

Having said that we made it around in 3 hours, even with various photo stops and drone flying stops.

At points it was far too windy to fly my drone, and at other points there were a lot of trees and I didn’t feel too confident flying it.

One of the waterfalls was in an open spot with some benches which was ideal for flying my drone, as it was also surround by hills.

Once we had completed the walk we checked into the hotel and had tea. We were both tired so we went to bed really early. We’d been up since 730.

In hindsight, I probably should have popped out to see the viaduct before tea…

Decided to start crocheting again. I tried a red panda but it didn’t really work out, and I was unsure if it was the pattern, or me, so I’ve crocheted a pattern from a book I’ve used before. I’ll give the red panda another go later.

So I’ve decided I want to burn stuff… So we bought a pyrography kit. First go!

When you’re just over half way through a holiday and you’ve lost all sense of time and day.

Most of Xmas we have been ill.

I was ill for 2 weeks before Xmas and I though “A-ha! For indeed I will be OK at XMas now.” And how wrong I was.

As a result of this my plan to go out with the drone every day hasn’t really panned out. Ive managed 4 times in just over a week, but to be fair the weather hasn’t been that great either.
What I have learnt is that the drone is better in wind than I thought it would be, and that I need to be more committed to panning and movement shots. I’m too focused on composition and so my footage is jerky whilst I try to correct it. I’m learning that in video this isn’t quite as big of a deal as with still images. It’s a learning curve.