Sonning Revisited

Thought it was about time DAMP & DISMAL got their cameras in action again. Haven’t been out a lot recently as Ed has been doing all sorts of trivial stuff like getting married and going away on honeymoon. Not much of an excuse I know, but it was the best I could muster to explain why we have been so slow in putting more pages on this site. Anyway, enough of this rambling, on Monday May 4th 2009 we headed out again, this time joined by my big bruv’, who tagged along as he had nothing better to do.

As usual, I suggested to Ed that a walk by a river would be good, at least this will stop his mountaineering instincts from turning a gentle photographic stroll into a lung bursting ascent up some steep hill. We couldn’t decide where to go but we decided to head back out to Sonning where we had been before. This time we headed in the opposite direction, (unfortunately not into the direction of the French Horn for breakfast), along the river towards Henley. Last time we were here it was a grey miserable day, and the morning of May 4th was similar. It is, as if Sonning gets wind of us arriving and brings all the grey clouds out to put us off coming back.

A funny thing did happen to us at the start of the walk as we crossed Sonning bridge, in a garden we spotted in the stream a duck sat next to a Kingfisher. We could hardly believe our luck, as we approached slowly and carefully to capture our shot of the year. Just think what they would say at the club I thought, a picture of a Kingfisher close up, one of the hardest birds to photograph and here it was only 15 feet away from us. Still it sat there next to the duck. It was then my suspicions were aroused, and I got that terrible deflated feeling as I saw that both birds had a shiny pozidrive screw in their back. They were plastic!! Oh well, another great picture bites the dust, had us fooled for a while though.

Naturally, it would take a bit more than a few grey clouds to stop us snapping away, so off we set. It took us a while to discover anything to photograph, but once we started, we soon got in our stride. I was determined to have another crack at using a macro lens, a bit of kit that I have never been able to get on with, since I got it. The trouble is, I am just not patient enough, as to get the best out of it needs a slow, deliberate approach, rather than a scatter gun approach that I use when taking my usual birds in flight. I soon found a couple of ugly crawly things to photograph (no, I don’t mean my walking companions) so got to work. Luckily what I was photographing didn’t move very much, but the gentle breeze was a bit of a problem moving things around.

After a while I had got fed up with this slow way of working and started looking for other things to do, luckily a goose flew overhead, and a few boaters started paddling along the river, much more my cup of tea. It was at this point the flask of coffee made an appearance (proper coffee, not any of this instant rubbish, you know) and lo and behold my brother produced some cakes he’d bought earlier from his local Esso garage. Now, I know why we invited him, he provides the cakes, I provide the coffee, and Ed is the only one who can read a map!!

The sky started getting even greyer and we decided to head back to the car, and it was at this point that I bumped into someone that I had been at school with and I hadn’t seen for a long while. All a bit of a coincidence, which shook the other two, not the fact that I bumped into someone from my dim and distant past, but the fact that someone who I went to school with, would still talk to me!

The further we walked, the greyer it got, and, sure enough, it started to rain just as it had done the last time we walked in Sonning, so we trudged the rest of the way back feeling pretty miserable. As we approached Sonning bridge we heard the familiar rumble of a Harley-Davidson which was all chromed and glistening, even the rider’s crash hat was chromed. This cheered me up immensely, no, not the sight of a Harley-Davidson, but the thought of the owner having to spend the next week with a ton of chrome cleaner, polishing the rain spots off the chrome work, and we thought we had a pretty miserable day!! Just remember, there is always someone out there having a worse day than you!

-- DaveMundy - 01 Jun 2009