Three Walks, Three Photos and Why We Keep Exploring
There is something rather nice about going for a walk without really knowing what you are going to find
Sometimes you have a particular destination in mind
Sometimes you have a route you know well
And sometimes you are simply heading out for the dog walk, expecting it to be much the same as any other day
But that’s the thing about nature
It has a habit of changing the plan
I’ve spent more than four years taking a photograph every single day as part of my #IansDailyPhotoChallenge, and if there is one thing that doing that has taught me, it is that you don’t have to go looking for something spectacular
Quite often, you just have to notice what is already there
And that got me thinking about three very different areas we walk in, and three photographs that perhaps say rather more about exploring than they initially appear to
Sometimes you don’t even need to leave home
Let’s start with one of the least adventurous sounding walks of all
The daily dog walk from home
It’s a walk we know incredibly well. It’s local, familiar and, on the face of it, probably not somewhere you’d expect to make a particularly exciting discovery
But then there are the days when nature decides otherwise
We came across this incredible sight while out on one of those walks
A mass of bees clustered around their exposed honeycomb
Now, that wasn’t something we had set out to find. I would never have even thought of it, let alone set out to see it
It was simply there
And because we were outside, walking and paying attention, we saw it
That’s one of the things I love about exploring nature. You don’t always need a map, a famous location or a carefully planned route
Sometimes the exploration starts the moment you walk out of your front door
And then there are the places you return to
Of course, exploring doesn’t always mean discovering somewhere completely new
One of the places we keep returning to is Clumber Park. It is our go-to place at least once every week
Maybe not the same route, but the same venue
It’s somewhere we’ve walked many times, and you might think that familiarity would mean there was less to discover
Actually, I think the opposite is true
The more time you spend somewhere, the more you begin to notice the smaller things
The changing seasons
The different light
The wildlife
The plants appearing and disappearing
And sometimes, something that might have been there every year suddenly catches your eye in a completely different way
Like these bluebells
It’s easy to think that exploring means constantly finding somewhere new
But I don’t think it does
Sometimes exploring means getting to know somewhere well enough to notice what has changed
And perhaps that’s why we enjoy returning to Clumber so much
I never quite know what the next photograph will be
Then there’s the unexpected
And this brings me to Padley Gorge in the Peak District
If you’ve ever seen photographs of Padley Gorge, there’s a good chance you’ll have seen the water
The river
The rocks
The woodland
All those things that make it such a beautiful place to explore
So perhaps this isn’t the photograph you’d expect me to show you
A moss-covered stone wall
And that’s precisely why I like it
Because we could have walked through Padley Gorge looking for the obvious photograph
Instead, something slightly to one side caught our attention
The wall wasn’t going anywhere
It wasn’t going to suddenly jump out in front of us
We had to notice it
And once we did, we started looking at all those little details that might otherwise have been missed
The texture of the stone
The layers of moss
The way the wall disappears into the woodland
It becomes a photograph not because it’s necessarily the most famous thing at Padley Gorge, but because for a moment, it was the thing we noticed
Three walks, but perhaps the same reason for all three
A dog walk close to home
A familiar walk around Clumber Park
A wander through somewhere as beautiful as Padley Gorge
They couldn’t really be much more different
And yet they all produced exactly the same thing
A reason to stop
A reason to look
And, in my case, a reason to get my phone out and take a photograph
That’s really what my daily photography challenge has become about
When I started taking a photograph every day back in July 2022, I don’t think I fully appreciated how much it would change the way I look at the world around me
It isn’t about having the best camera
It isn’t about travelling to the most spectacular places
And it certainly isn’t about producing a perfect photograph every day
It’s about being curious
You start wondering what you might find
You start noticing the things that you would once have walked straight past
And perhaps most importantly, you give yourself a reason to slow down for a few minutes
So, where should you explore?
Well, that’s the great thing
It doesn’t have to be Padley Gorge
It doesn’t have to be Clumber Park
It doesn’t even have to be a particularly special walk
Try your local footpath
Walk around the park
Take the dog out
Walk somewhere you’ve walked a hundred times before
And this time, look at it differently
Look up
Look down
Look behind you
Look at the things growing on the wall
Look for the tiny things hiding amongst the bigger things
And see what you find
Because you never quite know what nature is going to put in front of you
Sometimes it might be a woodland carpet of bluebells
Sometimes it might be an old stone wall disappearing beneath a blanket of moss
And sometimes, on a completely ordinary dog walk, you might stumble across hundreds of bees and a piece of honeycomb
That’s why I keep exploring
Because I never quite know what I’ll find next