Photos – Sutton Gault

Last week it was a Twitter comment that caught my eye from one of my followers, a fellow artist @magging who commented that she used to live in Cambridge and Ely. I mentioned that I would be painting a moody watercolour of Ely Cathedral rising out of the fenland mists when Maggie suggested I went to Sutton Bridge (if she remembered it right) because there was a good view of the cathedral from there. I subsequently promised that I would take a trip out there over the weekend and post a few pics for her.

As I later found out, unfortunately you can’t really see Ely Cathedral from Sutton, but as I was driving around the area I discovered a little back road that was signposted to Sutton Gault. After a mile or so I came across an unusual looking bridge with an ancient Inn beside a river, so I parked up the car and spent the next few hours exploring the area on foot with my iPhone camera at the ready.

Every track I took, and every corner I turned I was confronted with the most beautiful and inspirational sights. In the space of a couple of hours I had taken over 450 photo’s and only after the battery in my iPhone was completely flat did I make my way home.

What resulted of that trip was a massive collection of over 450 reference photographs that I would like to share with all my fans, followers and fellow artists. You’ll find photo’s of moody fenland sky’s, dykes, rivers, streams, bridges, bracken, flowers, details of trees, leaves, barks, fences, stiles, old buildings and even a crumbling, lichen covered UK BT red telephone box. Feel free to use any of the images I’ve captured for your own inspiration and creations, and I hope you find them a highly useful source of reference.

I plan on going back throughout the year and hopefully capture the same details in different seasons and different lighting conditions, and if you would like me to “Zoom-In” and focus on a particular detail on my next visit then please make your request in the comments below, I’ll try to photograph your request on my next visit.

Also on the day I met a really nice woman called Liz (sorry to have raised your hopes - thinking I was from BT and upgrading your local, battered old telephone box!) Thank you Liz for the offer of a cup of tea next time I’m passing – On my next field trip to Sutton Gault I’ll bring my field sketching kit with me and I’ll trade you (and your husband Ian) with one of my sketches for a cuppa!

If you live in the region, and you would like to go with me on my next exploratory foray into the fens and fancy joining me with your sketch books, paints or cameras, please just drop me  line and we’ll try to arrange to meet up and explore together.

Finally, Maggie, thank you so much for letting me know about Sutton Gault, I’m not sure it was the place you intended to send me so I’ll keep looking and snapping photo’s for you until I find it! I do hope you like the photo’s I’ve taken anyway, and I hope they bring back wonderful memories and remind you of your home so far away from where you are these days in California.

These images are provided under the following Creative Commons licensing terms:
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike - CC BY-NC-SA

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About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an aspiring watercolour artist, passionate about painting the world around him in watercolour and sharing his experience with others. Connect with Ian on Google+

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