Top Withens

My staycation this year involved travelling through the Yorkshire Dales, with stop offs at Fountain's Abbey, Hawes, Ingleton and Haworth. 

The lack of telephone, wi-fi and even television one night was a bit of a culture shock at first, however, after going through cold turkey I realised how much more creative and productive I had been on the trip. Having spent a good three days getting to grips with the minutia of my camera beforehand and also purchasing a filter for said trip, I felt I was fully armed and even packed the laptop to transfer my files across at the end of every day. 

It wasn't until I got to the final destination at Top Withens (recovering from a migraine) that I realised how important it was to arrive at a place specifically to carry out a creative task. I had heard from a writer that it was another way of fending off writer's block, to actually take a notepad to a chosen destination to sit and write. The atmosphere of Top Withens, with high winds and fields as far as the eye could see, made this a perfect and very dramatic location to focus the mind on the creative task in hand, be it writing, drawing or photography. I had some lunch and set about my practice, creating a photograph which I felt captured the real essence and beauty of the landscape, with rolling hills and a dramatic sky.