I revisited Great Staple Tor for some sunset shots at summer. I hate to get up so early that I can be ready for the sunrise shots, but the sunsets are perfect. The previous time I visited Great Staple Tor was in May (see my post about Great Staple Tor), but each opportunity offers something different, as you will see in this post!
Great Staple Tor was originally called “Great Steeple Tor, but when the cartographers from Ordnance Survey visited the area to draw the maps, they misheard and wrote the name down as “Great Staple Tor” and that name has stuck. The image below is taken from Middle Staple Tor a little bit below looking up to Great Staple Tor. You can see the two prominent “steeples” in the middle with the open field in between. My sunset images this time were all taken from the right (east) tor looking towards the other (left; west) tor.
My previous visit was shot from the west (left) steeple, roughly where the sun is setting at my top image, and again looking west towards the granite boulders at the far left in the image above. I repeat my sunset image from May here below, to refresh your minds a little!
Just before sunset (30 minutes before) I took the image below looking south straight towards the port of Plymouth. Notice that you can see the sea in the background, where the English Channel begins (or ends, depending on where you start your voyage).
My first photo of the setting sun was the photo at the top of this post. It was taken 23 minutes before sunset as the sun creeps in behind the western tor. As soon as the sun went behind the tor I relocated to see the sun again, when it approached the horizon lighting up the beautiful clouds above. This image was taken 17 minutes later. And after another 5 minutes, the last of the sun is just about to disappear under the horizon.
Seven minutes later the sun has dropped and the ground turns darker, but the clouds are still flaming red, lit up by the sun rays below the horizon. I have moved my position again the fit the lovely wispy clouds between the two “steeples”. It was a lot of running and climbing up and down to get to the positions for the next shot in time, but it all worked out.
