ruin – Steel City Snapper photography

The week after we returned home from Italy, I decided to go out and shoot some more large format film with my Chroma 4×5 camera. I decided to visit Roche Abbey, a 12th century Cistercian monastery, or what remains of it at least. It does beg the question of what it would look like today had it not been destroyed as part of Henry VIII’s disolution of the monasteries? Indeed, what would the entire area have looked like – one might imagine a whole town at least, rather than a ruin in a lovely looking valley. Still, trying to imaging how things might have played out with a change in a historical event is quite the rabbit hole to disappear down, and whole novels have been written about such things.

The monastery is under the auspices of English Heritage and there is a fee to enter (although there’s a conveniently placed public footpath just the other side of a fence with full view of the ruins if you don’t feel the need to get right up close). Accessing the abbey is down a narrow cobbled lane that provides some serious rumbling through your car’s suspension and tyres (more on this later…).

Taking in the ruins — Two other visitors had photogenically colourful sweaters on, so I included them in the picture.

I had four sheets of HP5+ to shoot with the Chroma, but I also packed my Olympus Trip 35 in the bag too, figuring I might be able to shoot more of the Fuji 200 that was still in the camera from the Italy trip. This was fortuitous.

Entrance to the abbey — This is the entrance to the abbey. Through that arch is the track back to the carpark where my “surprise” awaited me.

I found a number of compositions for the 4×5 and carefully focused, aligned, and exposed the images. This was the first time I would be shooting the camera since McGuyvering another fix for the light-leak issues I’d been having with the camera, but I was pretty confident that I’d fixed them. Spoiler alert: I hadn’t.

In between making the large format pictures, I also shot about a dozen frames with the Trip. This saved the day, photographically speaking.

Remnant — A smaller part of the abbey structure still standing. There are helpful signs around the place explaining where you would be if the monastery were still intact.

There were two notable negative outcomes from the day. The first was that my light leak fix didn’t work. Upon developing them I found that all four images had massive light leaks in exactly the same way I’d encountered them previously. After making the effort to drive to the location, pay admission, take the time to shoot the images, and then develop them the next day, this was very disappointing

The second outcome was spotted when I returned to my car and noticed that the rear tyre had a noticeable and – given I would have to drive on a motorway, worrying – split in the side wall. Given that cars these days rarely have a spare anymore – just a repair kit – I was left to decide whether to call out a breakdown truck, or to take the risk that the tyre would hold out for the journey home.

I decided, possibly foolishly, to take the second option. The split looked worrying, but also like it should last the thirty minutes or so it would take to get home, although I planned on driving especially carefully and as slowly as possible. Driving back up the cobbled track was a nerve wracking experience, and I expected to hear a loud pop as the tyre burst with every bump of the wheels, but it held out ok. Back on the main road, the car was similarly fine, although I was hunched over the wheel, prepared to react should something happen. After a while I drove past a tyre shop, but it was on the opposite side of the road and I was already past it by the time I realised. However , a short distance further on, there was a tailback of traffic and a police car was parked astride both lanes for some undetermined incident. Deciding that this was a sign, I turned around and returned to the tyre shop.

Entrance house — The building at the back is the entrance to the abbey. The valley was landscaped by “Capability” Brown in the 18th century and is very picturesque.

Unfortunately, there were no new tyres of the correct size, but they did have a used tyre available. I would never buy a used tyre under normal circumstances, but on this occasion it seemed a better bet than the actual damaged tyre on the car. It was also remarkably (and worryingly) cheap, so I decided to go ahead.

Thankfully, the trip home was, while a bit stressful, uneventful, and the used tyre survived without a blowout or any of the other catastrophic failures my mind imagined might happen. I replaced the tyre with a brand new one from my usual tyre dealer the first chance I got though.