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Feeling like an extra from the X-Files

We both finished work late, it was time to tackle Blake Mere. This is location number 72 in the book and is the closest one to home, in fact, it's only a 25 minute drive. It's not the most interesting place to look at but it does have some very interesting history. It's known locally as Mermaids Pool because of an old legend; a woman was accused of being a witch and was drowned in the pool, the man that made the accusations was then found dead 3 days later at the side of the water with his face covered in claw marks. It's also claimed that the pool is actually bottomless with the mermaid still living there.

Obviously all of that is nonsense but I have to admit, I did feel a little bit troubled by it all as I was walking around the boggy and somewhat flooded surrounds of the pool. I had visions of some haggard old mermaid woman crawling out of the pool and dragging me in it only for the scene to be investigated by agents Mulder & Scully. Anyway, enough of that. You can see in the distance that rain was coming and off to the right was a lot of incoming cloud. In fact, this was about as much light as we had all evening making it quite a difficult place to shoot! This location is also quite exposed and very very high up, the wind was absolutely brutal and made for a very cold couple of hours!

Shortly after that shot was taken we switched to the telephoto and tried to get an image of Hen Cloud and the Roaches in the distance, we missed the best of the light because of all the faffing with the lens swap but did still manage to get this:

Shortly after, the sun was completely covered by the cloud, another night where there was no decent sunset, oh well! We didn't want to leave with nothing so decided to try a long exposure with a completely different composition. Every time I look at the image I change my mind about it, sometimes I like it and sometimes I hate it, it's something different at least:

We packed up our things and headed home, it had been a mixed evening but at least neither of us had drowned in the pool ;)

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