Holmebrook Valley Park is a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation. It is situated about two and a half miles out from the centre of Chesterfield and it has entrances on Newbold road and Linacre road. Here is a satelite view of the park.
The park is situated at the site of an old open cast mine. The most prominent feature is a large lake that has been formed over the mine.
When I set off to see it the sky was pretty clear. However by the time I got there it had clouded over quite significantly.
There were a lot of birds (ducks, geese, swans) on the lake. Several times while I was there they took off in large flocks and flew around the lake.
While I was there I wanted to try out some of the filters I bought a couple of weeks ago. I used a neutral density filter to get this shot of a stream. It didn’t make as much difference to the shot as I thought it would, so I probably should have gotten a darker one.
I was also going to try the circular polarising filter but it was far too overcast for that to make any difference to the shots. I took a few shots using an infra red filter which I’m going to work on processing to see what sort of effects I can create with them.
During an earlier visit I saw a couple of mandarin ducks. There weren’t any here this time but there was this fellow. According to the RSPBs site it’s a Grey Heron.
Heading out from the park, there are paths leading to the three reservoirs in the area. I didn’t visit them this time but probably will in the future.
Posted by msparshatt 
