Sunday and I was aching from my long photo walk around Great Witley in Worcestershire the day before.  Outside the sun was shining again and decided I would do a small late morning early afternoon photo walk around some Cotswold villages in Gloucestershire not far away starting in Stanton.

From Stanton to Buckland

I have visited Stanton before on a different photo walk over and around Snowshill.  This walk took a different route through the Cotswold villages of Laverton and Buckland and then along the Cotswold escarpment with good views westward across the vale.  Nothing to overexert 3.5 miles just to do my daily 10,000 steps and get some more sunshine.

I could not be bothered to even attach my tripod thought I would just concentrate on handheld shots.  Certainly those houses in the Cotswold sure look pretty built from local stone.  There are a lot of disused quarries in the area.

Leaving Stanton towards Laverton and some nice views out towards Bredon Hill across some rapeseed fields.

Clouds were moving in fast now and made the sky a bit more interesting but by the time I had reached Buckland manor, it was now completely grey with even the threat of rain.

Still overcast is suppose to be best for photographing bluebells under the canopy of some woodland on the grounds of Buckland manor.

Along the escarpment of the Cotswold hills and some rams and sheep provided some nice points of interest with the village of Averton in the midground and Bredon hills in the far background.

Still I feel the shots I took around the Cotswold could have benefited from using a filter and a tripod.  With the sky having turned a dull mass of grey I needed to cut as much of it out as possible which required the land to contain all the interest from near to far.

Mount Inn Distraction

Back in Stanton it would have been disrespectful to not visit the local pub the Mount Inn, which is a steep climb itself.  From the Mount Inn there were nice views across the vale of Bredon and Oxenton Hill. I do want to explore those hills to the left and for that I first use google maps and then Ordnance survey.

The photo of the view from the beer garden of the Mount Inn above is not usable due to to many distracting features, the car bottom middle but most noticeable the telegraph line cutting right through the photo.  To try and remove this post processing in Photoshop is more effort than I am prepared to put in.  Have missed lots of great photos due to telegraph poles and lines.  Its not a problem when they are far away, but close in and they ruin an otherwise great shot!  Bloody planners, really inconsiderate of them, not thinking of landscape photographers.