A Day In The Petal Fields
Back at the beginning of July, my photography friend and adventure buddy Hannah messaged me about an amazing opportunity for us to bother our dogs alllllllllllllllll day long. The opportunity in mention was the dog friendly day at the Shropshire Petal Fields on Sunday 13th August. At the time I wasn’t able to go, as Tim, Skylar and I were supposed to be on our sailing holiday. Unfortunately, that was cancelled as the boat engine is kaput, but the flip side of that, was Skylar and I were now free to go to the petal fields!!!!
After booking our tickets, I got a message from Hannah saying her folks were going away, so she no longer had her dog model Damson, so Skylar was going to have to do the heavy lifting and be Wales’s number 1 top dog model for both of us, hopefully she was up to the task and wouldn’t pull her granny face all day ….
On the day of the event, Hannah arrived at mine at 8:30 am – I honestly don’t know how normal people get to work on time, I had to get up a 7 am on one day, and it was really hard! Luckily, I am my own boss, so I choose Jo friendly work hours 😂. After deciding which banger car we would be transiting in – mine, currently with no working front wipers or Hannah’s Corsa that sounds like a tractor… the decision was made for us, when it started spitting with rain, so the Corsa tractor it was!
Road tripping with Hannah and Skylar
Me and my car buddy
What I call Skylar’s ‘Granny’ face…
We arrived pretty much bang on 10am and from the car park you could see an amazing array of colour from all the beautiful flowers.
Before we get into Skylar’s modelling part of this blog, I should let you know more about the Shropshire Petal Fields. The flowers are a rainbow of colours from beautiful flowers like delphiniums, cornflowers, sunflowers and wildflower. Once fully grown, the flowers are handpicked and then dried into award winning confetti and dried flowers which are sold all over the world. You can see what the final product looks like or order your own, over on the Shropshire Petal website.
After taking our photo by the entrance banner, we headed into the flowers. There were wide pathways winding their way through all the beautiful flowers, with dedicated photo pathways and cutouts, along with some props, like an absolutely massive deckchair (after watching many people get stuck in this, we made the decision to perch rather than sit right in!) and also some old tractors and straw bales.
Mandatory photo under the banner
Flowers producing beautiful bands of colour
Perched on the massive deckchair aka the visitor trap 😂
When it came to taking the photos, Wales’s top dog model aka Skylar 😂, like any true model can be a bit difficult shall we say… Luckily, as I have had 10 years of dealing with her, I was prepared, and brought a tether with me to keep her still – over the years, she has learnt the sound of the shutter on my camera so the moments she’s heard it once, she thinks her job is done so heads off. By having her tethered, it gave us a more little time to get a few photos at each location before giving her a good fussing for being such a good girl. Another bonus of this tether was that everyone who was walking past thought Skylar was the bestest behaved doggie in the world 😂.
As we were there in the flowers, and I had a photographer with me, I took the opportunity to make Hannah take a photo of me and Skylar 😂. Usually, I have to take these myself with my camera on a tripod, and then use either my phone or a remote to take the photo. Whilst this works OK, it can be quite difficult to get right, so I took full advantage of Hannah’s skills. I saw a lady with her dog in the sunflowers looking very majestic and decided that I wanted the same. While we may not look as elegant as the beautiful lady with her tiny dachshund, I love the photo Hannah captured of me and my Skylar bug ❤️.
Now here is the bad news, for those of you reading and viewing these photos, who now want to head for the flowers to get your own lovely snaps, the site has now closed for the year, so they can harvest the flowers. What you can do though is give the Shropshire Petal Fields a follow on Instagram, so you can be ready to book your spot for next year.
A special thank you to Hannah for finding this epic location for us to explore and for taking my photo with Skylar ❤️. To see Hannah’s awesome photos from the petal fields as well as her other images, you can check her out on Instagram.