“Snag and Sky” — A skeletal dead tree silhouetted against a cloudy Cotswolds sky, England.
You might never guess by looking at this photograph, but I made this on a beautiful day with blue sky and dramatic clouds, in an area along a trail in the Cotswolds that was very green. I was surrounded by gentle hills, green wheat fields, and many spring-green trees. But there was this one dead snag, devoid of leaves, standing starkly against that sky.
“Spring Leaves” — Spring leaves, Botanical Gardens at Royal Victoria Park, Bath.
More than once I have mentioned that when we travel we like to just head off in interesting directions and wander, not sure of what we’ll see. It isn’t that we don’t view the main, iconic sites of the cities we visit — we don’t just limit ourselves to those places. Sometimes the wandering is very productive. We see places and sometimes people we’d miss in the tourist areas, and we can often find spots that are less crowded and hectic. I made this photograph in one of those places.
“Cotswolds Forest Clearing” — A break in the trees lets sunshine into a clearing in a Cotswolds forest.
During spring the woodlands and fields and pastures of the Cotswolds are very bright and green… if it isn’t raining. Of course, it is the rain produces all of that green. We had our share of sunny days, but we also experienced the rain — generally light and transitory, but a bit more substantial on the final day of our weeklong walk. This scene was midway through the walk, where the path crossed green hill, the trees opened up a bit, and the sun shone in.
“A Cotswolds Trail” — Two Cotswolds hikers pause in the sunlight between old trees and a wheat field.
I have to confess some (OK, a lot of) ignorance about England outside of its cities. We’ve been to the country a number of times, but that usually means going to London and then visiting a few other relatively urbanized places. So “my England” has been basically London and a few (mostly popular) towns. We’ve passed through the country on trains and looked down on it from the air, but this trip was the first time that we actually went out and walked through it. I learned a lot!