castlehead - what a view

"Surely there is no other place in this whole wonderful world quite like Lakeland...no other so exquisitely lovely, no other so charming, no other that calls so insistently across a gulf of distance. All who truly love Lakeland are exiles when away from it.''

Alfred Wainright.

I love The Lake District.  For a landscape photographer it is a dream location to visit, and I love how different parts of the Lake District give me a different sense of place - with some areas wilder, more remote and more rugged than others.  In a way, each lake seems to have its own personality and character.

The weather is a different matter though!! Boy can it rain there.  So I was lucky on my last trip, in early November 2023, to have a few good days of sun and broken cloud to enjoy whilst I visited family and did some photography.

Before each visit, I try and put together a rough plan of a few locations I would like to capture. I try to keep the plans fairly loose and flexible, as I want to make sure I have captured the location well enough before I move on to the next one, and also to enable me to react to different weather conditions and lighting once there. 

To help with this planning process I use google maps, the Photopills app - to give me sunrise and sunset times, and the path of the sun - and for the Lakes in particular I reference an amazing book by Stuart Holmes called Photographing the Lake District (2nd Edition, published by Fotovue). I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  Stuart is local to the Lakes and has done an amazing amount of legwork visiting, photographing and detailing hundreds of locations across the area and his book is an absolute treasure trove of useful information. His website is: https://www.lakespanorama.co.uk .

For this visit I was based in Keswick as I wanted to photograph some locations around Derwent Water.  I have stayed in the area many times and just love the fells surrounding Derwent Water, especially Catbells.  Having captured a number of locations in previous trips to Derwent Water I was keen to try and find somewhere new, with a different vantage point and view of the lake.

 The two locations I chose to fit this bill were Castlehead and Latrigg Fell.  I will cover Latrigg Fell in a separate article, as it is worthy of one on its own, and will focus on Castlehead in this article.  Castlehead is an outcrop of ancient volcanic rock, on the north eastern side of Derwent Water, with a rocky summit that gives stunning views along the entire length of the lake. Directly opposite is Catbells with the Borrowdale Valley off to one's left and the town of Keswick to the right.

The forecast looked good for a morning shoot - morning and evening look to be the best times of day to avoid having the sun being directly in front of you - and so, after a full cooked Cumbrian breakfast, I grabbed my camera bag and headed off on foot for Castlehead, as my bed and breakfast accommodation was only half a mile away from the location.  (I can recommend The Grange Country House as a very good b&b, with easy access into Keswick on foot, albeit it’s a tough walk back up hill most of the way - www.grangekeswick.com) .

 Castlehead was easy to find and I was full of anticipation as I headed up the wooded path to its summit - a word or two of warning here:  the path can be a bit muddy and slippery and there are some natural steps to clamber over near the top and parts of the climb up the hill are really steep.  My Garmin watch said my heart rate hit 170 on the climb up, although it felt like it was going harder than that. I'm not sure it was a great plan to head up there immediately after the cooked breakfast!

However, once I reached the top all was forgiven as the views were just stunning.  The outcrop is high enough to give you enough of a vantage point to look down over Derwent Water, but low enough and close enough to the lake that you still feel part of it. It was absolutely wonderful. 

I had decided to pack light gear for this trip as I knew I would be covering some hilly ground, so I had with me my Fuji XT5, and 16-55mm and 70-300mm lenses. I wanted these two lenses so that I could capture some wider angle views with the 16-55mm lens and also use the 70-300mm lens to zoom in for some tighter compositions and pick out specific details in the landscape, like the image above, as I sometimes feel that going too wide minimises the size and majesty of the fells.

The summit is quite rocky but there is a bench and I set myself up with the shorter telephoto lens and began scouring the view in front of me for suitable compositions. I also set up my DJI Osmo Pocket 3 to do a few timelapse videos. Do have a look at my videos page and my Youtube Page to watch my videos of here and other locations.

I was so taken by the photographic opportunities on offer - and all from relative comfort of a bench - that I decided to spend the entire day there, capturing the changes in light and shadow on the landscape as the sun moved around the lake.

The light was wonderful for the first couple of hours, with a blueish haze across the lake, with the very calm water giving up fantastic reflections of the surrounding fells.

I found a host of compositions I liked, from the view in the image above looking towards the Borrowdale Valley, with the white house as a focal point, to closer telephoto images of the lower slopes of Catbells and the Newlands Valley beyond. I’m always drawn to the patterns in the water left in the wake of the motor launches as they ferry walkers around the lake and so I captured a range of images at different focal lengths and with different backdrops.

All in all, I sat atop Castlehead for about 5 hours, enjoying the photography immensely. For a fair part of that time, I had the summit to myself, occasionally punctured by individuals and families arriving at the top, completely out of breath, but overawed by the view. A very friendly robin flew over and landed on top of my camera but I didn’t have my phone to hand to capture what would have been a great image and, although he came close again several times, he never alighted on the camera again. Shame.

By late afternoon the light had gone, clouds had moved in and blanketed the scene in dull light. I felt I should probably move my body, having been sat on the bench for most of the day and there was a nice cup of tea back at my b&b and the chance to review the images I had taken. The only downside was that it was uphill all the way back to my room!

Castlehead is a wonderful location and well worth the short and steep climb for the vistas it gives across Derwent Water. I’m sure I’ll be back in different weather to see what that might bring photographically - what a view!