The church on a lake (Part 1)

I seem to spend my life being pushed one way or another by fate. And so it was that I ended up at Normanton church a few weeks ago. For some strange reasons, our tiny county of Rutland had been in the news more than once. The first was the announcement that McDonald’s, the fast-food giant, had set its sights on the market town of Oakham. The second time was the death of Monty Python’s Terry Jones. It was almost a lifetime ago that I worked with the team on a spin-off called Rutland Weekend Television. I was a dancer back then and part of Frank and Peggy Spencer’s Latin American formation team. We had been asked to take part in a sketch entitled “Kung Dancing”. It was a fun day.

For some bizarre reason, I decided to find out a bit more about England’s smallest county and typing Rutland into Google brought up some photographs of Normanton Church on Rutland Water. I’d seen images before, but imagined it was situated much further north. It was still a 150-mile drive from home, but over the course of the afternoon, a plan started forming in my head. I needed good weather, of course, and my husband would have to work from home to see to our animals, but it was possible.

Eventually a fine day was forecast. I cleaned my gear, charged my batteries and filled up my little car. It was going to be a long day. In fact, it turned out to be more gruelling than I had imagined, with a three-hour drive there, four hours at the church and another three hours home. When I arrived, the wind was much stronger than expected and the choppy water meant there were no reflections. Then heavy cloud moved across resulting in flat light, but with an hour to go until sunset, the cloud began to thin and I was able to get the images I had hoped for.