Golden Fields & Slow Days: A Weekend at Berrends Farm

There are some weekends that become memorable because you pack them with things to do.

And there are others that stick with you simply because there was nowhere else you particularly wanted to be.

Our weekend at Berrends Farm was very much the latter.

Warm weather, wide-open countryside, golden fields and long stretches of absolutely nothing urgent happening made it exactly the sort of escape we needed. Once we'd arrived, unpacked and settled in, the pace of everything seemed to drop by several gears.

Naturally, somewhere between putting the chairs out and making ourselves comfortable, the drone batteries appeared.

It would have been rude not to.

Berrends Farm really comes into its own from the air.

At ground level you're surrounded by hedgerows, trees and country lanes, with each field appearing almost as its own little world. Send the drone higher and suddenly the entire landscape connects.

Fields stretch towards the horizon in shades of gold and brown, broken up by thick green hedges and clusters of mature trees. Farms, houses and vehicles shrink into tiny details while the sky seems to get bigger with every metre of altitude.

And what a sky we had.

Huge summer clouds drifted above us with patches of deep blue between them, throwing moving shadows across the farmland below.

It was classic British countryside on a particularly good day.

The view you can't see from the road

That is one of the things we love most about aerial photography.

You don't necessarily need dramatic mountains, rugged coastline or enormous landmarks. Sometimes simply lifting above an ordinary country lane completely changes the story.

From up there, those winding hedges become patterns. Fields become textures. Trees throw long dark shadows across the dry ground.

Everything suddenly feels bigger, quieter and somehow more connected.

Looking back down towards where everyone was staying gave the weekend an entirely different perspective.

What felt like a sizeable camping area from the ground suddenly became a tiny pocket of activity surrounded by fields.

Cars and campers sat beneath the trees. A narrow lane ran neatly through the landscape. Tents, caravans and little groups of people became tiny splashes of colour against all that green and gold.

There's something wonderfully satisfying about spotting your own pitch from several hundred feet above it.

“That one's ours.”

“No, that's a bush.”

“Ah. Right.”

Eventually we found it.

Watch the weekend from the air

Watch our Berrends Farm Facebook Reel

The best bit about the weekend wasn't really the drone flying.

It wasn't the views either.

It was simply having time.

Time to sit outside without checking the clock. Time for conversations that didn't need to go anywhere. Time to wander about, watch the light move across the fields and enjoy the fact that nobody was rushing us towards the next thing.

That is probably why weekends like this feel longer than they really are.

When there's no packed itinerary and no constant travelling, you actually notice the day.

A cup of tea takes as long as a cup of tea takes.

Dinner happens when everyone starts looking hungry.

And sunset turns into an evening rather than another item on a schedule.

We couldn't resist getting a few straight-down shots as well.

Top-down drone photography has a strange habit of making everyday places look completely different.

Buildings become shapes. Paths become lines. Trees turn into enormous green circles and people become tiny characters wandering around a giant map.

Even the most ordinary little corner suddenly becomes something worth studying.

There's a phrase frequently heard whenever we take the drone away.

“One last flight.”

It rarely means one last flight.

The light changes. A cloud moves. Someone spots another angle. One battery still has 73 per cent left and suddenly packing away would clearly be irresponsible.

So up it goes again.

And that's how a few photographs gradually turn into a proper record of a weekend.

Months from now, these shots won't just remind us what Berrends Farm looked like. They'll remind us of the warmth, the dry grass underfoot, sitting outside together and those enormous skies above us.

That's what makes taking the drone along worthwhile.

It captures more than the view.

It captures the setting around the memory.

Eventually the chairs had to be folded.

The cables had to be gathered up.

Everything that had somehow fitted perfectly on the way there had to be persuaded back into vehicles using a combination of determination and questionable spatial reasoning.

And our little Berrends Farm weekend came to an end.

Nothing spectacular had needed to happen.

We'd had countryside, sunshine, good company, some beautiful views and enough time to properly enjoy all of it.

Sometimes that's exactly what a weekend should be.

A few slow days beneath a big sky.

A drone buzzing somewhere overhead.

And one more memory stored away for later.

NIX DRONES // SKY