The Allure of Blea Tarn
Blea Tarn is situated in a small hanging valley between Great Langdale and Little Langdale in the heart of the Lake District. Glacial ice moving over the col from nearby Great Langdale shaped the tarn back in the Ice Age.
Blea Tarn is a popular haunt of many Lake District landscape photographer’s including, over recent years, myself. Since I started photography in 2020, I have visited Blea Tarn many times, and it is one of my favourite locations in the Lake District. The tarn is a place where I go to for tranquillity and peace, and I now only go there very early for sunrise or very late for the incredible dark skies. I have a very strong sense of belonging to Blea Tarn which I think is connected to the iconic view of the rugged Langdale Pikes, which brings back many memories of hiking the Pikes when I was a youngster with my late father, and later, fabulous days rock-climbing on Gimmer Crag which is on Loft Crag near Pike Of Stickle and Pavey Ark.
For me, as a photographer Blea Tarn is all about reflections of the Langdale Pikes in the water, so I only tend to visit when the forecast is for very light winds. I have visited Blea Tarn for photography in all seasons of the year but a recent visit, provided one of my best mornings of photography.
Following a bleary-eyed 02.45 alarm in May 2025, I set off for the selected location, Blea Tarn in Langdale. I almost stopped at Elterwater as the mist was hanging in the valley bottom there as it often does, but I continued in the hope that there might be mist at Blea Tarn, which would be a first for me. I parked my car in anticipation and wondered what the photography conditions would be like at the tarn. As I started walking down the path to Blea Tarn, I was excitedly jolted by the sight of mist on the surface of the tarn, but will it last I thought? Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I started running down the path, and I was soon on the Southern edge of the tarn, and amazingly, the mist was still there, but where was everybody else? Surely, I could not have the place to myself on such a morning. Eventually, I was joined by three other photographers, one of them my good friend Jonny Gios. What followed was one of my best mornings of photography to date. The mist kept coming and going, and as the sun rose and kissed the Langdale Pikes, we were gifted incredible photographic opportunities with almost perfect reflections, calm water, atmospheric mist on the water surface and the tranquillity was only broken by the beautiful sound of a very vocal cuckoo. What a morning and I was on a high for days after!
