Recently I realised I had quite a bit of instant film left that was going out of date so I organised a walk in Manchester. Then a new friend said, “Couldn’t it be further south then I could go too?” So I thought, yes it could. I have a friend in Leicester that I haven’t seen for ages so I could kill two birds with one camera…or 3 in my case.

I changed the details, booked a train and whizzed my way to Leicester. I had an Instax wide, an Instax LiPlay, and a Diana F+ with an instax back in my bag.

There were more people than I expected on the walk, but still a nice small number. My friend from Leicester took us to see some street art and then we wandered around some of the medieval parts of the city. Unfortunately, King Richard III was having a spruce up so we couldn’t visit him. I have been before though. Interestingly, I watched a documentary about the finding of his body the day before. Then, when I got home I watched the movie, “The Lost King“. Now I feel I need to visit the location of the Battle of Bosworth to finish the journey.

Anyway, back to the Instant walk. I didn’t take too many shots as I felt the light wasn’t right for the Diana, a bit dull. So I took a few shots of the street art with the wide version to start with.

Plus some of the area so I could finish the pack I had started elsewhere. I didn’t reload it.

The Diana is able to take multiple exposures, so I tried a few of those in mini format.

Then to finish the pack I took a few of the scenery. You can see it was getting quite dull.

In terms of photography, it wasn’t my favourite day out. I did love the street art though.

The best part of the day was completely unexpected. As we reached the ‘castle’, I gave that air quotes as there really isn’t one, I saw an ancient door that was open. It looked like it led to a church bell tower. I wondered aloud if it was open on purpose and maybe it was inviting us up to explore. The others agreed, so we entered and started climbing. Unbeknownst to me, 2 of the group hadn’t seen us do this and we lost them at this point. Up we climbed, steep stone steps, me in the front unable to change my mind or turn back due to my big butt and the tight space, until we reached another door and a platform. There sat two men around a table, and both seems surprised to see us. I apologised and explained about the door and our curiosity. They looked at each other and then said, “Come on in”. Then they proceeded to give us a tour of the bell ropes and how they work. They even allowed us up to the belfry, which was up more steps, even smaller, older, steeper ones. At that height, we got a great view of the city too.

Here are a few shots I took on my phone.

After we descended, we continued our Leicester walk but happened to return to the same area fairly soon. The door was now closed 🙂

So I still have a fair bit of instant film left, maybe I will use it on the next day out if it is sunny enough. I think Instax film needs lots of light.