Swindale, Lake District, Spring
We finally got the opportunity to explore one of the Lake District’s “hidden” valleys.
I’ve had Swindale bookmarked in my Pinterest for years now. What drew me to the area was looking at maps of the valley’s head, appropriately called Swindale Head. Here you can find a series of cascades and waterfalls dropping down 300 ft of crag, known as Forces Falls.
Reality, thankfully, was much better than any map or Google Image Search.
Swindale is not the easiest valley to find, and I suspect most people near the area venture either to Ullswater or Haweswater. Certainly, driving up the A6 through Shap, you’d have no idea of Swindale’s existence, especially as the valley is well obscured by Rosgill Moor and Ralfland Forest.
The valley is part of RSPB Haweswater and aspects of it are being “restored” to more natural features ever since 2012. In 2016, the beck running through the valley was “rewiggled”; previously, the beck had been straightened a couple of hundred years ago to prevent the flooding of hay meadows. This had knock-on effects—as man’s meddling in nature does—primarily with salmon and trout that were no longer able to spawn in the straightened and now-fast flowing river. Once the beck had been rewiggled, salmon returned to spawn, and the diversity of the beck’s flora and fauna continues to improve.
After negotiating the myriad of minor country roads, we arrived near Swindale Foot Farm to park at the small lay-by. Then it was a simple task to follow the road, which increasingly became a gravely lane, all the way into the valley towards Forces Falls at the head of the valley.
Photographically, conditions were challenging. The weather was changeable, with frequent waves of misty drizzle washing over us from the fells. This meant I had to keep getting the camera in and out of the bag; the camera body can take the rain fine, but none of my lenses are weather sealed.
I’m happy, nevertheless, with what I did manage to capture, but I’m eager to explore the valley further once again, when conditions are more favourable. Swindale is remote, silent, and so very beautiful.
All photos shot on my Fujifilm X-T2 using my three prime lenses: a Samyang 35mm f/1.2, a Laowa 9mm f/2.8, and an adapted Pentax SMC 55mm f/2.0. The images were made 80% in-camera using a customised Velvia film simulation, with minor edits afterwards in Lightroom and Affinity Photo