Westerham is a Kent town on the A25, close to the Kent/Surrey border. It is close to Chartwell, the home of the late Sir Winston Churchill. Other nearby residences of note include Quebec House and Squerryes Court. Westerham appears to do a roaring trade in antiques, judging by the number of such shops the town contains!
These pictures were scanned using the CanoScan FS2710 film scanner.
If you want to see a larger image of any of these pictures, please click on the picture.
Bromley Camera Club went to Westerham in Autumn, 2000 as one of their official club outings. The weather was kind, and although it was a cold day, as one would expect for late Autumn, the sun shone, and members were able to take advantage of a great many photo opportunities while walking on some of the footpaths and public rights of way behind Westerham.
The Bromley Camera Club members met in a car park below the church, where walking boots were donned. We walked through the church grounds, calling in on the church, which had been left unlocked for us, on our way. Owing to the tower being covered in scaffolding, few shots of the exterior of the church were taken, but here is a view which doesn't include the tower.
Many members took advantage of the opportunity to view the interior of the church. I particularly admired the tiling on the floor. Below are two hand-held shots I took of parts of the floor using 400ASA film.
After emerging from the church into the High Street, various photo opportunities were seized. I liked the buildings on a street corner, with a lamp post between them.
After making our way along the High Street, we took to the footpaths and rights of way behind Westerham. This tree still had its leaves, despite Autumn being well advanced.
Generally, there were a remarkable number of Autumn leaves still on the trees, considering the windy weather which had occurred in the preceding weeks. The picture on the left is some of those leaves, as they looked on the tree. On the right, I have taken some leaves from a negative and digitally manipulated them, before putting them on a black background.
Text of an article I posted to alt.penpals.forty-plus-yrs at the time of the Westerham Walk.
This year the chosen walk started and finished in Westerham, a village
on the Kent/Surrey border and just a stone's throw away from the
infamous M25 - the London Orbital Motorway.
We were to meet in a car park in Quebec Avenue and be ready to walk at
10am. I should go and read up on my Westerham history, as the name
Quebec crops up in and around the village, and there is also a "big
house" nearby that bears the name.
[General Wolfe, who conquered Quebec in Canada, lived in Quebec House.]
When I asked the walk organiser a couple of weeks ago if my trainers
would be adequate footwear, he told me that if I wore them I would get
very wet feet, so I paid a visit to the Millets shop in Bromley a week
ago and obtained a pair of walking boots, which I wore around the house
in the evenings all last week to break them in a bit. On Friday night, I
gave them a liberal coating of wax, and by five to ten on Saturday
morning, I was wearing them outside for the first time and praying that
I wouldn't end the day with blisters!
The walk set off through the nearby churchyard. It had been arranged
that the church would be open so that members could go inside for
photography if they desired, and most people did go in. I don't know
whether anyone photographed the stained glass windows. There were some
beautiful ones there. For myself, I took some photographs of the floor,
which had some lovely mosaic tile sections. The ceiling was also
interesting as it was made of wood panels, but without heavy duty
lighting, it probably wouldn't have photographed well, so I let well
alone.
After emerging from the church yard onto the High Street, we admired an
etched window on one of the buildings, although I don't think anybody
photographed it. I observed the club president photographing an
interesting window display in one of the shops, and I had a go at a lamp
post that I liked. There was also some mosaic paving further down the
High Street, but I must have blinked at the wrong moment as I missed
that.
Then we took off up a little side street which led to the start of a
footpath and we were out in the countryside and it became apparent that
even though it was a beautiful sunny day, our walk organiser was quite
right about trainers being a recipe for wet feet: we encountered quite a
lot of wet grass and a considerable amount of mud along the footpaths.
Despite the high winds a week ago, there *were* still some leaves on
some of the trees, so a lot of members have probably obtained shots of
the autumn colours. I saw some interesting trees, and think that I may
have even caught the light just right on one particularly nice one,
although I suspect that I may yet live to regret being too lazy to put
my polarising filter onto the front of my lens.
I saw several members showing considerable interest in a very muddy
puddle where some heavy equipment had been working and leaving
interesting tyre tracks. A discarded pallet was found by one person and
carried to a strategic place so that he could lie on it on his stomach
for a better view of the mud. It will be interesting to see the result
of that: it may be a very creative "pattern picture". Several other
members expressed an interest in using the pallet as well, although I
didn't see whether they actually did so when they got told that the last
person to use it would have to put it back where the first person had
found it!
At one point, our route took us across a field in which there were sheep
and Highland Cattle. Last year a club member had a winning slide of a
flock of running sheep and I think a few club members would have liked a
similar shot if it presented itself. From the field, there was also a
view across to an oast house. I think it has been converted to
residential accommodation, as I didn't see any hop fields in the
vicinity for which the oast house would have been required to serve its
original purpose.
We eventually emerged onto a road at Chart and walked to the nearby Star
Inn, where the landlady was expecting us and was therefore ready to feed
a couple of dozen people shortly after their arrival with their pre-
ordered food. The bar did quite a reasonable trade as well: we'd walked
up quite a thirst!
After lunch, we took to a different footpath which took us back to
Westerham in about 40 minutes. I was glad of the supermarket carrier
bags I had left in my car, as my boots were well christened and I
certainly didn't want them coming in contact with the carpets in my car,
which were hoovered only a couple of weeks ago. I am pleased to report
that the boots did their job admirably: my feet stayed dry and blister
free. I did take the precaution of icing my troublesome achilles tendon
on my return home, but today it doesn't appear to be complaining. Of
course, I am stiff all over, so maybe I just can't notice it! As we
probably spent about four hours walking, and were expecting to cover two
miles an hour, I suppose we must have covered about eight miles, which
is rather further than I walk most days and caused me to be tired enough
to go to bed soon after 9pm:-)
