Essay Competition Winners 2025

Aftermath of apples: I loved the colours, shapes, patterns of the rotting apples dropped from the tree into the compost heap

The photograph shows the 'broken' remains of the A625 road linking Sheffield to Chapel-in-le-Frith at Mam Tor, the 'Shivering Mountain'. The road was constructed in 1819 across a 4000 year old landslip, one of the biggest in the UK, due to the unstable underlying geology. For the next 160 years it was constantly repaired building up over a two metre layer of road construction materials as shown in the photo. In 1977, the landslip moved again after heavy rainfall and despite efforts to repair the road it was closed permanently in 1979.

Orford Ness is a remote shingle spit of land south of Aldeburgh in Suffolk sold to The National Trust by the Ministry of Defence in 1993. It is now managed as a nature reserve but 'frozen in time' to retain the AFTERMATH eerie atmosphere of it's Top Secret history when it had been used as a military experiment testing site since before the first World War. These Pagodas were built to test the missile/bomb (without the atomic bit!) against the extreme rigours of vibration, temperature and shocks. in case of a catastrophe the Pagoda buildings were designed so the pillars would collapse to contain the force of an explosion.

Saw this in a small village called St-Paul-de-Vence in the South of France. The aftermath of letting the ivy grow unchecked around the bars of the window.

A sunny morning stroll along the beach shows the damage wreaked by the severe gales and strong waves which battered the coastline the previous day.

Aftermath of a nice meal on our recent cruise down the Amalfi Coast

This well chewed ball caught my eye on a walk at a nature reserve.

A Panorama of Denbies Vineyard, near Dorking, manipulated with the MegaPhoto app.

This was taken along the coastal path from Whitehead. The tree had been battered after a storm the previous day. I converted it to black and white

It speaks for itself really.

A fallen tree in the tidal estuary at Lawrenny, Pembrokeshire. Fortunately the tide was out so we could continue our walk.

We came across a farmer dredging his ditches and this is what he had unearthed. Sadly this is an all too common sight. Apologies for the gloomy subject but the bright blue bags looked so out of keeping with the pretty country lane.

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.

i noticed the extensive damage to this plant caused by snails feasting on the leaves. It seemed devastating to me and suited the "aftermath" title, but on reflection is probably a normal day for the snails.

I looked out of the window and saw this sparrowhawk with the pigeon. I grabbed my camera and went out into the garden and got quite close to it. Unfortunately I couldn't save the pigeon as by then it was dead. The sparrowhawk then flew away leaving feathers everywhere.