The Malvern Hills

The panorama was taken towards the northern end of the Malvern Hills on top of one of the minor peaks heading up towards the highest point, the Worcestershire beacon at 425m. The full range of hills is approximately 8 miles long (running north south) and half a mile wide. The Countryside Agency here in the England class the area as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. If you were to travel east from the Worcestershire beacon at a height of 425m you wouldn't touch land again until you got to the Urals on the far side of Russia!

Looking out on one side of the hills you can see Malvern and the rest of the flat severn valley, on a clear day you can see right across the valley. On the other side you are looking across the rolling countryside of Herefordshire and again on a clear day see as far as the Black Mountains in Wales. Two completely different counties separated by the hills.

Malvern is of course famous for a few things around the world. Firstly we have our bottled water, drunk all around the world. This is bottled in a plant on the Herefordshire side of the hills, up against the hills, just out of view of the panorama. Next we have the famous composer Edward Elgar, who lived, worked and is buried in Malvern (St. Wulstan's Churchyard). He often said that the beauty of the Malvern Hills provided the inspiration for much of his music. Finally we have the Morgan sports car, still being hand built in Malvern and then exported to every corner of the globe.

Taking the panorama was a bit of a challenge, the weather might have been dry, but it was windy, very windy. Strong enough to blow my glasses off my face and have to hold the tripod very tightly to make sure that it didn't move between shots or just get blown over. I consider myself very lucky to be able to live in and take panoramas of such a wonderful place.

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Europe / UK-England

Lat: 52° 6' 1.48" N
Long: 3° 21' 18.16" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Taken with a Nikon Coolpix 990 and a FC-E8 Fisheye lens. Mounted on an simple L shaped bracket. 4 portrate frames taken 90 degrees apart with the fisheye circle just touching the top and bottom of the frame, while being clipped on the left and right. Stitched using Panotools and seams manually removed. Finally converted to a QTVR Cube using PanoCUBE and added QuickTIme for the web's autorotation widget.