How do you spend your last day of summer? By doing a photowalk and/or running, of course!
So, on the last day of the late summer month of August I did a photowalk around Ferry Meadows while my wife did some running and walking. After a couple of hours walking, we have covered a large area of the country park (12+ kilometres) which was why I got very sore and painful feet for a couple of days afterwards.
We started our walk/running from Lakeside, where we also parked. I did not have any particular photography theme at the start except that I have to take photos of the Pyramid sculpture, which we will pass by during our walk. So I took photos of anything that will interest me that day.
As we cross Milton Bridge, I suggested to my wife that we take the Riverside Walk as it will lead us to a newly-built boardwalk and then back on to Ferry Meadows Visitor Centre. It was our first time there so we took to it with some kind of adventure.
Imagine my surprise while we were walking I caught a glimpse on my left of what seems to be an interesting wood carving, or sculpture if you like, so I quickly made a turn. The wood sculpture is that of a shepherd and his dogs. It was wonderfully carved but sadly, there was no sculptor name or information about the artwork that I can write about. It was then I thought that there might be a few more wood sculptures hiding around where we walk so I was on the lookout for more as we continue on walking.
Before we arrived at Riverside Walk I already took a photo of an owl inside a tree, found not far after the children's play area, which we often pass by on previous walks but have not been photographed before. That was after we pass by the metal sculpture Bird in Flight but not the wood sculpture Sentinel as it was out of our path.
Going back to Riverside Walk, after the shepherd sculpture we finally found the boardwalk, a 750 metre long newly built walkway. I remember part of it was quite muddy and slippery some years back and I appreciate the big change. At the end of the boardwalk is Bluebell Bridge, which we crossed to go back to the Visitor Centre, where we made a short stop to recover our breath, and unload our bladders!
I came across two more wood sculptures in the Wildlife Garden beside the Visitor Centre. I will write about all these wood sculptures on a separate post that I will link to this article.
From the Visitor Centre, we continue our walk and this time around Gunwade Lake, the biggest of all three lakes in Ferry Meadows, followed by Overton Lake and Lynch Lake. There, we took a quick stop at the Pyramid, which used to stand proudly alone in Ferry Meadows for a long time before it was joined by the Sentinel, Bird in Flight and a few wooden sculptures.
Further on, we made a brief stop at the Lynch Farm bridge and to our surprise it sat on top of Nene Valley Railway. Too bad, we missed the train by a few minutes as we saw the smoke coming from it as it passed by while we are about to exit the path from Gunwade Lake. It will be a place I will take a photo of (and from) when I will photograph heritage railways in the near future.
Back at the Lakeside car park, my wife and I are quite exhausted as we thought we have walked too much than planned though there was no plan to start with! Anyway, it was worth the walk despite the pain. As the saying goes, 'No pain no gain' but is there a saying about 'not going to do that, ever again!'?
Note: Ferry Meadows map in pdf form
All photos were taken with a micro four thirds camera (https://amzn.to/2K8BUl6) attached with a telephoto zoom lens (https://amzn.to/2YvqiMJ).
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