Not a walk, walkabout in Long Eaton

Date: 2012-03-16

Region: Derbyshire
From: Long Eaton

Walk :  Figure of 8

OS Sheet: Explorer 259 & 260

Parking at: On road

Grid: -

Distance: 7.6 mls 12.25 km

Height Gain: 60ft 18m

Height Loss: 60ft 18m
Walking With: -

Notes: Mainly road and canal/river tow path, some fields one or two stiles and gates

Route
I’m not writing up the route for this one as what I did was so convoluted. The route on the map above is a normalised version of the route I actually took.  I feel this actually makes a worthwhile walk with plenty of scope for extending or amending. If you disagree post a comment!


Journey

Last Friday found me back in Long Eaton, this time not on a walk with Andy, but taking my car to the garage for some works, leaving me four hours to kill. So I went for a  VERY DIFFERENT walk, not in the hills or countryside but around a busy town with  nothing planned, just taking turns left or right on a whim. However while the turns were random I did have an overall plan.  I’ve recently joined a Camera Group (Club sounds far too structured for us) so I was out to get photo’s for this week’s two Projects, Contrast and Foreground and despite the dull grey flat light Long Eaton provided a range of good photo opportunities particularly for the contrast theme.

I wandered down long rows of terraced houses dating back into the eighteen hundreds, past pre First World War houses, 1930’s houses all bays and gables and along roads of more modern properties. Intermingled amongst the houses I found factories and mills, workshops and yards, getting small glimpses of life here a hundred or more years ago.

Nearer the town centre some of the terraces and factories had been removed, others remain. In between new roads have been built, pubs converted to night clubs, new offices, retail units, private housing and workshops built, post WW2, producing a somewhat bizarre mish-mash of styles, colours and materials.

 If you were just walking from car to shop and back this area might be dull and boring but with a camera looking for Contrast and Foreground shots , plus thinking about Perspective and Experimentation, last week’s Project, along with what bloody F stop do I need at this shutter speed  it was interesting.

There was a colourful and busy small market along one of the pedestrianized streets where I had couple of conversations about ‘what was I taking pictures of''.

 I also went in to café for a coffee and a cake, not bad.  Earlier I’d walked through a graveyard where I saw the saddest Contrast of the day, the grave of a 5 week old baby next to one of a 96 year old man.

Moving on I made my way to the Canal, on the way crossing over my earlier track, and headed south towards the River Trent, meeting a fisherman, three dog walkers, one cyclist and one canal boat moving and several moored, plus a swan.

On reaching the Trent I turned east walking along the well surfaced path to the Cranfleet Lock.

As I continued east along the track I was nearly marmalised by two separate groups of 10 to 15 cyclists running a couple of minutes apart, all talking and generally totally unaware that anyone else might be on the path. I ended up some 3 foot, (sounds further than a metre) onto the grass, and not one of the b.ggers even gave a Hi as they passed.

I was fuming and chuntering so much I didn’t notice that I’d passed the path I need to take back to Long Eaton and I’d walked a good mile further before I realised and walked back to path going in the right direction. The OS map I was using is slightly out of date as it shows large open fields and a small pond in reality there are  huge water filled gravel pits and a small field.

I had a great day, walked nearly eight miles, got cold, warmed up again took 30 photos and will be submitting the first one I took on the day for the Contrast competition. Others are about dotted above.

Simple because I had no destination, no end point and no specific time constraint, I feel that everything I saw and everyone I met were seen differently, carrying a camera with the aim of taking photographs of specific types seem to create this slightly detached feeling. Or perhaps it was because I was doing something so free on a workday.

I must try this random walking again it was fun.