bodiam castle east sussex

Great Dixter to Bodiam Castle East Sussex

Another warm sunny April morning and I decided on a walk from Great Dixter to Bodiam Castle in East Sussex to practice some more with my new Canon Compact while I waited for my DLSR to be repaired due to sensor dust.

Macro Flower Photography

Parking up in Little Dixter, I not really into walking around stately homes and neatly kept gardens, I wanted to take the countyside footpaths cutting across to Bodiam and visit the castle.

orchids dixter
orchid 1/800 sec, F/2.8, ISO 125, 18.875mm

Walking along the footpaths along the side of fields I began to notice Orchids and some got down with my compact close to the ground and took some macro close up shots, full zoom, which is not much on my canon compact 4x and opening up the aperture to get some bokeh with the distance objects behind.

april orchids
orchids 1/1250 sec, F/2.8, ISO 125, 36.8mm

Closeby was some fresh wild garlic that the morning sunlight was catching.

wild garlic
wild garlic 1/320 sec, F/4.0, ISO 125, 36.8mm

Im still on the lookout for some wild Marjoram. When not taking landscape photos, I change my settings and get down and shoot colourful plants or wildlife in the hedgerows.

nettle flowers
nettles  1/1600 sec, F/2.8, ISO 200, 36.8mm

Bodiam Castle

After getting down in the dirt I joined the sussex border path through Ewhurst green towards Bodiam and across some marshland and flood plains of the river Rother with the castle now appearing in the background.

flood plains bodiam
marshland 1/400sec, F/5.6, ISO 125, 21.69mm

I arrived in Bodiam around 10AM and its worth noting there is a café there that opens at this time where I had a bacon sandwich and coffee before continuing into the grounds of the castle itself. Across the road is a pub called the Castle Inn that opens at 9AM and does a full English breakfast if your a hungry horse.

bodiam castle
Bodiam castle 1/125 sec, F/8.0, ISO 125, 8.8mm

Bodiam Castle itself is pretty impressive as I captured it in the April mid morning light handholding my canon compact. Its free to walk around the grounds of Bodiam castle but costs to walk inside.

bodiam castle
bodiam castle 1/1600 sec, F/2.8, ISO 125, 8.8mm

With the moat the castle looks like its floating on water. I walked around the grounds capturing different viewpoints. I sure would like to return to Bodiam castle sunrise with my DLSR and a tripod. Further up at Bodiam station I could have taken a steam train back to Dixter but decided my legs needed the exercise but worth knowing. I was going to walk along the river rother but using google maps could not see a bridge leading to the other side.

bluebells dixter
bluebells 1/2000 sec, F/2.8, ISO 200, 36.8mm

I took another countryside route back to Dixter and managed to capture some bluebells along the way, springtime was in full bloom and walking outside with your camera is the thing to be doing. Back home post processing the photographs I had taken that day I was impressed with the clarity and colour saturation of my new canon compact camera.


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