Four Trees

Occasionally Peter and I convert a BDO (Boys' Day Out) into a BEO. This usually involves adjourning to a pub either in his village or mine.

This evening we added exercise to this activity by walking a couple of miles along a stretch of the canal that's featured several times in my journal over the past couple of weeks.

The light was perfect, radiating from a cloudless sky at a low angle through the reed beds and willows. We strolled, made images, exchanged pleasantries with other walkers, fishermen, boaters, cyclists, the whole pantheon of human life that relishes a warm evening doing something by water.

We supped ale at the Fir Tree at Dunhampstead (what a great word 'sup' is, must use it more often). On the way back in the gathering gloom, I tried once more to get a satisfactory picture of the four firs at Oddingley; I've been fascinated by this row of trees for many years and the coming of digital cameras has allowed me to waste even more time pointing a lens at them. It's not even a group of three.

At the moment there's too much foliage in the way; I took this picture holding the camera above my head - no mean feat with a 400mm lens stuck on the front of it but we're made of tough stuff, we Gloucestershire folk. I think we'll return in winter when the leaves have fallen and the rushes died back. Then there'll also be the opportunity to use the reflectivity of the canal in the foreground.