Wedding Photographer Keswick — Derwentwater, Castlerigg Stone Circle and the Northern Lake District Fells
Keswick is the Lake District’s northern capital — a market town at the foot of Skiddaw’s massive 931-metre bulk, on the shores of Derwentwater and at the convergence of the Borrowdale valley, the Newlands valley and the Bassenthwaite vale that together form the northern Lake District’s most dramatic and most accessible fell-and-water landscape. For Keswick wedding photography, the town provides portrait settings of a particular romantic and elemental quality: Derwentwater’s shallow lake with its four wooded islands, Castlerigg’s Neolithic stone circle on the open fell platform above the town, the Borrowdale valley’s ancient sessile oakwood and the open summit ridges of Catbells, Maiden Moor and the High Spy above Borrowdale together create a portrait day of maximum Lake District mountain and water diversity.
Derwentwater, the Lakeside and the Borrowdale Valley
Derwentwater — the broad, shallow lake three miles long and just over a mile wide, fed by the Derwent from Borrowdale and draining north-east through the Greta to Bassenthwaite — is among the most photographically varied of the Lake District’s principal lakes: the Friar’s Crag viewpoint (the promontory of Sycamore wood on the east bank with the view across to Cat Bells, considered by Ruskin one of the most beautiful views in Europe), the Stable Hills landing stage and the boat launch by the Theatre by the Lake provide portrait settings of intimate lakeside character with the encircling fells providing a continuous fell-skyline backdrop. The Borrowdale valley south of Derwentwater — with its ancient sessile oakwoods of Gowder Crag and Johnny Wood and the Bowder Stone (the enormous glacially-deposited boulder on the valley floor) — provides a deep-woodland valley portrait setting of unusual ancient woodland character.
Castlerigg Stone Circle, Catbells and Skiddaw
Castlerigg Stone Circle — a Neolithic stone circle of c.3000 BC on an open fell platform above Keswick, arguably the most dramatically positioned prehistoric monument in England given its complete 360-degree fell skyline setting — provides an elopement and micro-wedding portrait setting of extraordinary prehistoric landscape power: the ring of 42 stones on the open fell, with Blencathra to the north, Helvellyn to the south-east and the Borrowdale fells to the south providing a complete mountain amphitheatre, creates portrait images of Neolithic human landscape occupation unlike any available at comparable stone circles in southern England. Catbells’ ridge above the western shore of Derwentwater — achieving 451 metres and taking less than an hour from the lake shore — provides a summit portrait setting with views encompassing the full southern Lake District from Scafell to Cross Fell.