Now, where were we...

Along the River Ure to Jervaulx Abbey

This walk was kindly suggested by a local chap we met whilst waiting for the bus.
It follows the river Ure from the Cover Bridge Inn to Jervaulx Abbey.

It was another hot day with little to shade us along the river section but thankfully once we’d reached the abbey we found shade and plenty of benches where we could rest. The riverside sections were wonderfully peaceful, with the sound of flowing water accompanying us almost all the way. Eventually the ruins of the abbey came into view, standing quietly among Jervaulx is a fascinating Cistercian abbey dating back to the 12th century. It is own by a private family and relies on donations for its upkeep, so be sure to donate if you visit.

Naturally, on the way back we stopped at the Cover Bridge Inn which itself is a 16th century inn and well worth a visit.

It was time to move on the Reeth for a short stop.

Reeth is a beautiful little village tucked away in the middle of Swaledale, surrounded by stunning views.

It’s a place we passed through whilst walking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and we have been meaning to return ever since.

Reeth and Fremington Edge

The weather spent most of the day trying to make up its mind, showers one minute, sun the next. We managed to thread our way between them, watching curtains of rain pass over the hills whilst staying mostly dry by sheltering under trees and being stone walls.
The views from the edge were well worth the climb, from there you can look down into Swaledale and Arkengarthdale.

The changing light after each shower gave the landscape a character that a cloudless day never quite manages.

A sheep obsession?

Apparently I seemed to have developed a fascination with photographing sheep.

At first it was just one or two that happened to be standing in particularly photogenic spots. By the end of the holiday I’d accumulated an alarming collection of sheep portraits, sheep in fields, sheep on hillsides.

Ten days disappeared far too quickly, as they always do and I definitely didn’t spend enough time photographing Reeth itself, I’ll have to go back again :).

Yorkshire once again reminded us why we keep coming back, it’s a beautiful place with fantastic walks and welcoming pubs.

I’m already wondering which part we’ll explore next.
Thank you for joining me on this journey, until next time, take care.

Rick

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We arrived in glorious sunshine, the sort that makes you think you’ve somehow picked the perfect week. Naturally, the first stop was the Wensleydale Brewery tap room for a celebratory pint.

About five minutes later the heavens opened.

Not just a bit of rain, but a full-on Yorkshire storm. The car park quickly turned into something resembling a shallow lake, and there we were, completely trapped inside the brewery while the rain hammered down outside. It would have been rude not to wait it out with another drink (or two).

A gentle start around Spennithorne

One of our first walks took us around the quiet village of Spennithorne. It’s the sort of place that reminds you why the Dales are so special. Dry stone walls, rolling fields, and peaceful lanes where the only traffic is the occasional tractor or a flock of sheep deciding they own the road.

The walk was punctuated by a visit to a lovely little community pub called the Old Horn. It’s great to see these places being rescued by the community.

Leyburn, Wensley Park and the Shawl

Another day saw us walking from Leyburn through Wensley Park before climbing back along Leyburn Shawl.

The Shawl has some of the best views in the area. Looking across Wensleydale, you can understand why people keep returning here year after year. The path follows the escarpment above the town, with panoramic views stretching across fields, woodland and the River Ure winding through the valley below.

Hawes and cheese, of course

No visit to this part of Yorkshire would be complete without a trip to Hawes.

It’s a bustling little market town with plenty to explore, but let’s be honest, there was one destination that was always going to make the itinerary: the Wensleydale Creamery. You simply can’t visit Wensleydale without sampling the cheese. It would probably be against local regulations.

After stocking up with enough cheese to keep us going for far longer than the holiday itself, we wandered around the town before heading back through more spectacular scenery.

End of Part 1

By this point we’d settled into a familiar rhythm. Breakfast, boots on, a day spent wandering through some of England’s finest countryside, then back via whichever pub happened to be conveniently on the route. It wasn’t a bad routine.

With Hawes ticked off, plenty of cheese safely packed away, and more sheep photos than I’d care to admit, the first half of our Yorkshire adventure had flown by.

Next time, a riverside walk with abbey ruins and another country pub, before heading into Swaledale with dramatic views from Fremington Edge... and yes, even more sheep.

Until next time, take care.

Rick

After many years balancing photography alongside a full-time career, today marks my final day of full time employment 😬.

It’s one of those moments that feels both significant and strangely ordinary. For decades, work has shaped my weeks, my routines, and often the time available for photography. Yet photography has always been there, quietly running alongside everything else.

I’ve never seen photography as simply a hobby or a profession. It’s a way of paying attention. A reason to explore a little further, to look a little longer, and to discover something unexpected in places both familiar and unknown.

Some of my favourite photographs have come from distant landscapes and coastlines. Others have come from woodlands I’ve walked countless times before. The joy has never really been about the destination. It’s about the discovery.

Now, with more time ahead, I’m looking forward to seeing where that curiosity leads. Not necessarily further afield or to grander places, but deeper. More time to wander, to observe, and to continue exploring the mystery that first drew me to photography all those years ago.

So while this week marks the end of one chapter, it also feels like the beginning of another.

Thank you for following along on the journey so far. I’m excited to share what comes next, who knows what’s around the corner.

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Of coarse you don’t need these things to take some great woodland images but for the past three months it seems like all we’ve had is rain and gale force winds. So when I awoke this morning and, bleary eyed, looked out of the window to see a thin vail of fog over the houses I was out like rat up the proverbial drainpipe!

Having not planned for this little photography outing, I headed straight for my local woodland, it’s always good to have somewhere very familiar you can go to at a moments notice. Despite the fog not being that thick, there was more than I expected in the wood, it’s usually the other way around. Strong sunlight from the clear sky helped create a soft bright background for these images, just how I like them.

I even went to visit the old Oak tree that had fallen earlier in the year, which was nice.
Even though it is now shall we say, reclining, I think it still makes a compelling image.
I be making sure to visit this fellow again. later in the Spring to see if it is still living.

Here are a few of the images I took, I hope you like them.

That’s all for now and thank you for being here.

If you’re not already subscribed, you help to support my work by subscribing for free here. You’ll also get early access to my limited prints when I release them.

As always, I really value your feedback.
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Where to Find Me:
You can see more of my work on my website at : www.rickbowden.co.uk

Until next time, take care.
Rick

Last spring I found an Oak tree in my local woodland that I thought would be nice in the right conditions. I could have walked on an made a note to come back when it was foggy, or during Autumn to catch the colour, but I decided to stop spend some time capturing it in the best way I could at the time. I made a half decent image of it but not the one I imagined.

For the reminder of the year, I never saw any fog in that part of the wood, and Autumn was a washout with high winds and rain almost every day.

Then on a walk in the woods at the end of December, I rounded the corner and stopped. The tree was no more. Fallen. Uprooted and already beginning to return to the ground it had stood in for years.

It was a quiet reminder that the moment you’re waiting for may never arrive.

Carpe diem. Seize the day.
Not in the loud, motivational sense, but in the small, practical one.
Make the photograph.
Write the paragraph.
Say the thing.
Use what’s in front of you, while it’s still there.

Perfection is patient. Life isn’t.

That’s all for now and thank you for being here.
If you’re not already subscribed, you help to support my work by subscribing for free here. You’ll also get early access to my limited prints when I release them.

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As always, I really value your feedback.
Please feel free to leave a comment, suggestion, or just a hello.

Leave a comment

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Where to Find Me:
You can see more of my work on my website at : www.rickbowden.co.uk

Until next time, take care.
Rick

If you’ve read, shared, replied, or simply spent a few minutes of your time with something I’ve written this year, I’m genuinely grateful. Time is the one thing none of us has enough of, and the fact you chose to give some of yours to this newsletter means a lot.

Writing can feel like a one-way street at times, but it isn’t. Your notes, comments, and quiet encouragement have helped keep this going, especially on the weeks when motivation was thin. I don’t take that for granted.

For those of you celebrating, I wish you a very Merry Christmas. I hope it brings you some rest, good food, and a few moments with your family.

And if Christmas isn’t your thing, or you don’t celebrate it at all, I wish you the same in a broader sense: a peaceful end to the year, time to breathe, and a chance to reset before whatever comes next.

Thank you again for being here. I’m looking forward to writing more for you in the year ahead.

Take care,
Rick

Firstly, let’s start with a brief explanation of what fog is and how it forms.

Fog is a cloud that forms at ground level. It appears when warm, moist air cools enough for water vapor to condense into tiny droplets that hang in the air. This usually happens on calm, cool mornings when temperatures drop overnight and the air can no longer hold all its moisture. The result is a soft, low blanket of mist that changes how light moves and how the world looks.

There’s something about fog that pulls me in, it softens the world, quiets it.

The clutter fades, as edges blur.

In that gentle whiteout, I find a kind of calm and a heightened sense of curiosity.

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Photographing in fog feels like stepping into another dimension, where the rules of light and space bend just enough to make the ordinary feel strange and new.

Trees dissolve into the distance. People become silhouettes drifting through empty space, buildings hide parts of themselves. What’s not seen becomes just as important as what is.

I’m drawn to that tension, the in-between, the not-quite-clear. Fog transforms a scene, it removes detail, but gives back mood, emotion, and mystery.

The whole world seems to pause in a way that never happens on a clear day. That pause gives me space to notice things I overlook when the sun is bright and the lines are sharp.

Over the last few years I have been drawn to creating images that invite curiosity rather than lay everything bare. I want my work to hold a little mystery, the kind that pulls a viewer closer and makes them wonder what lies just beyond the frame. When an image raises questions, it lingers. It stays alive in the mind, carrying its own quiet pull long after the moment has passed.

Fog is fairly rare where I live, which is part of why I chase it.

I regularly check the forecasts for any signs of mist or fog whilst mentally building plans of where to shoot.

When I wake to find the world blanketed in mist, I grab my camera and head straight out, because I know the fog won’t last. It never does.

Below are a few recent photographs taken in the fog. I hope they evoke something for you too.

That’s all for now and thank you for being here.
If you’re not already subscribed, you help to support my work by subscribing for free here. You’ll also get early access to my limited prints when I release them.

Subscribe now

As always, I really value your feedback.
Please feel free to leave a comment, suggestion, or just a hello.

Leave a comment

Please share this if you think others might find it interesting.

Share

Where to Find Me

You can see more of my work on my website at : www.rickbowden.co.uk

Until next time.
Rick

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We’re in the middle of an unseasonably hot August and it feels like I haven’t been out in months. Honestly, that’s not far from the truth, the last decent images I made in the woods were back in April.

Summer is usually a slower time for landscape photographers, but this year has felt even quieter. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s my reluctance to keep repeating the same old shots. Probably both.

I half-expected this to be another Sunday where I’d berate myself for staying in. But at 8 a.m. the clouds rolled over, the temperature dropped, and I finally got off the sofa and out the door.

And you know what? It was great. I’d forgotten how much I love wandering through the woods, just looking for compositions. The conditions weren’t perfect, but that didn’t matter, it just felt good to be out there again.

I wasn’t chasing perfection this time, just reconnecting with the act itself. Not every walk with the camera has to produce a portfolio shot, and that’s something I keep needing to remind myself.

By the time I came home, I didn’t have a masterpiece, but I did have a sense of momentum again, and that’s enough. Autumn is on the horizon, and I want to be ready for it.

So yes, summer might have slowed me down, but it hasn’t stopped me. The woods are still there, waiting.

Until next time
—Rick—

Back in March, fellow photographer Jon Gibbs and I spent a week immersed in the wild, windswept beauty of the Northumberland coast. Seven days of nothing but chasing light, battling the elements, and, more essential, sampling every coffee and cake combo the region’s cafés had to offer.

The weather didn’t make things easy. Cold winds whipped in off the North Sea, and some days it felt like winter still had a score to settle. I even had to buy a new hat to keep my head warm! But if you're after moody skies, shifting light, and drama in your landscapes, Northumberland delivers. And in challenging conditions, the rewards often outweigh the discomfort, but not always.

We based ourselves just South of Berwick-upon-Tweed close to the coastline, giving us easy access to some of the area’s most beautiful spots, Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Budle Bay, and of course, the mighty Bamburgh Castle.

The Fog at Bamburgh

One morning stood out above the rest. We arrived at Bamburgh before dawn, the wind stilled and the usual coastal clarity swapped for thick, rolling fog. At first, visibility was poor, almost nothing to shoot. But as the light began to rise, the castle slowly emerged like a ghost from another age, wrapped in mist, surreal and cinematic.

The fog gave everything a softness I don’t often get on the coast. Compositions turned minimalist. Lines, layers, and negative space became the story. It was one of those rare moments when nature hands you a gift, brief, unexpected, and unforgettable.

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Cameras, Cakes, and Coastal Light

Between early starts and late finishes, Jon and I made it a point to support the local café scene. Turns out, nothing fuels long exposures like a slab of Victoria sponge and the odd bacon roll thrown in for balance.

The rhythm of the trip settled into a satisfying loop: shoot, eat, shoot again, although as the inevitable tiredness kicked in my compositions duly suffered.

As always, traveling with another photographer brings a different energy. Jon’s a master of compositions that I might have overlooked, and bouncing ideas back and forth out in the field kept both of us sharp.

What I Took Away

This trip reminded me why I keep returning to the Northumberland coast. It’s not just the castles and cliffs, it’s the rawness, the space, and the way the weather can completely transform a scene within minutes. You never get the same shot twice. And even if you did, you wouldn't want to.

I hope you like the few images I’ve uploaded here, maybe some day I’ll manage to find time to process the rest :)

Until next time
--Rick--

BTW if you haven’t already subscribed to Jon’s publication yet I’d highly recommend you do .

Jon’s Substack

Whatever comes into my head

By Jon Gibbs

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So I gave myself a task. Photograph the blackthorn in bloom in my local woodlands, which are all within 5 miles of my house. Nothing ambitious, just something to shape my walks and see what comes of it.

A Slow Search

True to form, the project began with optimism and a few nice images in golden backlight on the first morning, but it quickly turned into a bit of a hunt. I kept finding small scruffy clumps in hedgerows, more tangle than structure. This is the way we normally see Blackthorn. I mistook cherry trees for blackthorn on more than one occasion, well, they do look similar from a distance. I explored new parts of familiar woods, old tracks, quiet back roads, and came away with a few usable frames and a handful of surprises.

There was a beautiful old bridge I came across along Marriott’s Way, an unexpected find on a day when the blackthorn failed to show. Another morning I ended up photographing silver birch and goat willow instead. A different kind of reward, but still part of the journey. On yet another grey day, I found some blackthorn growing by a quiet roadside, and the soft light gave the images a gentle, high key feel I had not anticipated.

That is what I have come to enjoy about these small projects. They make space for detours and for noticing things I might otherwise pass by.

What I Have Learned About Blackthorn

Before this project, I knew very little about blackthorn beyond its blossom. Now a few facts have crept into my notebook.

• Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is one of the earliest flowering trees in the UK. It often blooms in March and the flowers appear on bare, thorny branches before the leaves appear.

• It is often confused with Hawthorn, which flowers later in spring and with leaves already present. Hawthorn also lacks the long, vicious thorns of the blackthorn. I have learned this the hard way.

• Blackthorn gives us sloes. I already knew this part. I have made sloe gin in the past and still have a few bottles of varying vintage tucked away in a cupboard. One of them must be nearly 12 years old by now.

• In folklore, blackthorn has a mixed reputation. It has been seen both as a protective plant and a symbol of difficulty or darkness. In Celtic tradition, it is associated with the darker half of the year. It is not all spring blossoms and cheerful hedgerows.

The Photographer’s Problem

One thing I did not expect was how tricky blackthorn can be to photograph. I am sure many of us are familiar with the unshapely white mass that appears in hedgerows each spring. From a distance, it can be lovely, a froth of blossom against the green. But up close, it often becomes a chaotic snarl of branches, thorns, and blown-out highlights. Finding a clean shape or pleasing composition was a challenge. Occasionally the light helped, or a solitary branch that found space to breathe, but mostly, it was messy. Beautiful, but messy.

Project Pause

And just like that, it is over, at least for this year. The blackthorn blossom has almost entirely faded now, replaced by the slow unfurling of leaves.

This was never going to be a long project, just a small seasonal thread to follow for a while. It gave me a reason to walk, to explore, and to pay closer attention to what is growing in the margins.

I hope you enjoy these images, make take on Blackthorn. Maybe I’ll continue this project next Spring.

I find myself returning to the woods often these days, more so than any other type of photography. Not always looking for something specific, but hoping to stumble into something honest. A break in the trees where light slants just right. The tangled limbs of trees standing like ancient guardians. A path that disappears into mist and shadow.

These places feel like memory. Like somewhere I’ve been before. There’s calm in the repetition, standing side by side, yet never the same. I love that contradiction: order and chaos, beauty and decay, all layered into one shifting canvas. Woodlands can be overwhelming, even messy at first glance, but there’s beauty in the complexity. The camera helps me find clarity in that mess. It becomes a way to explore not just the landscape, but something internal too.

In my woodland images, I try to capture that feeling. Not just how the woods look, but how they feel, dense, textured, sometimes quiet, sometimes overwhelming. Some are simple studies of shape and light. Others are more abstract, where forms melt into motion and shadow.

Below are just a few example I’ve picked out, I’d love to hear what you feel when you look at them.

Until next time, may you find a quiet path, a patch of light, and a reason to pause.
—Rick—

The direction and quality of light can have such a dramatic influence on the landscape.

Two images captured moments apart on a recent visit to Cheswick Beach in Northumberland, demonstrate this difference quite well I think.

Having patience and waiting for the clouds to part for brief moment can be so rewarding.

Here I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts and experiences about photography in general.

Subscribers will get also get early notification of my limited time print releases before anyone else knows about them.

Warm Regards
Rick

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