Day 178 - Ghostly Castle

pleasant view...wait, what?!

It's not immediately obvious why, but this photo really freaked us out a little bit when we looked at it on the computer...

We'd been down the lane for a walk, and whilst Jazz was with us, Loz had stayed behind (for a change), so we'd got a little further than usual.  

Looking for inspiration and pointing the camera here and there, I took a few landscape shots - several fairly pleasant ones...although none of them anything to write home about. 

But then I looked a bit closer at this one, and noticed the top of a castle away behind the barn...

wtf?

There is no castle over there!!

The shot was taken from a gate into the field, looking west towards the village a mile or two distant...believe it or not, this is the same viewpoint looking in the same direction as the photo labelled no deer in the boar post...

The barn in the upper-middle of today's photo is about a quarter of a mile away from where the shot was taken.  There's nothing between the barn and the village, and definitely no castles in the immediate vicinity!

The land we're looking across is historically famous as being where the opening battle of the English Civil War took place, in 1642.

Is this ghostly castle somehow a reflection of the past?!

Before leaping to extravagant conclusions, I loaded up Google Earth and checked the fields for anything that might explain this spooky fortress,

Nothing...

Right, let's draw a line from my vantage point and see where that takes us...across the fields...over more fields...and eventually into the village...straight into the heart of the village...straight to the church.

Opening up streetview, what do I find but this:

illusory church

According to Google, this church is 1.5miles from where I took the photo...I was using a fully zoomed 300mm lens, and apparently this can lead to some interesting effects!

It's really quite remarkable how clearly the church tower can be seen, from so far away...it's approximately 5 times further away than the barn obscuring it...

If only I could see so clearly a foot in front of my face, that would be useful!

B-)