and if it rains, if it thunders suddenly
where will he shelter looking round
and all that lies to hand is his own bones?
So the composition’s not perfect and the light balance isn’t quite right but hey, I’m not a photographer and my camera’s a ten-year-old point and click, and this is one of my favourite photos I’ve taken this year so here it is to celebrate World Photo Day and the anniversary of the invention of photography. Continue reading
Date: Thursday 25th September 2014 Distance walked: 9.5 miles Total distance: 296 miles
Bude
Bude was quiet at nine in the morning. A few dog walkers. A few determined swimmers in the sea pool. To the south a pale blue glimmer in the sky, the rest was grey with lowering clouds that had me fretting on the way in that it might rain and I’d brought the wrong coat. Cee and I parted at the car park tucked in behind the beach and the harbour. I set off up round by the sea pool. Past a row of 1920s beach huts with painted doors and window shutters: red, blue, green, navy, light blue, red. The tide was low. Bude beach was a deserted spread of smooth sand the colour of foundation for a skin tone darker than mine, pocked with morse code lines of footprints Continue reading
Date: Wednesday 24th September 2014 Distance walked: 10 miles Total distance: 286 miles
Crackington Haven
Woke to showers which cleared to a brisk wind from the north-west, bright colours, cloud-shades indigo on the sea and crisp white waves. There were sharp shadows on the double peak of Cambeak to the west of Crackington Haven. I climbed the first hill, 100m or so above the dusky pink beach and handful of dwellings in the crease of the valley mouth, and could see Lundy for the first time since Pentire Point on the Camel Estuary. Continue reading
Date: Tuesday 23rd September 2014 Height climbed: 4045 ft Distance walked: 11 miles Total distance: 276 miles
Tintagel Head: the haven, Merlin’s Cave, the castle remains and the Island
I returned to Tintagel at about 10:30am this morning to find it bright and misty, which sounds like an oxymoron but in early autumn on the Cornish coast this is what it’s all about. The shadows were sharp, rocks, corners and caves black and deep; the remains of the castle on the headland known as the Island were picked out by the morning sun from the south-east. From the bottom of Tintagel Haven, where the tide was out exposing the caves and cove below the land-bridge to the castle, I headed on up to Barras Nose, the next cliff-head east of Tintagel Head, to get a view of the coastline ahead. Continue reading
Date: Monday 22nd September 2014 Distance walked: 9 miles Total distance: 264 miles
view from Main Head, Port Gaverne north-east to Tintagel Head
Late September and it was perfect weather for walking. The sky was blue as a robin’s egg, the sea a pale topaz with a slight haze on the horizon and the lightest breath of a northerly breeze moved through the air. It felt like summer but was starting, ever so slightly, to look like autumn.
Date: Sunday 26th August 2014 Distance walked: 12 miles Total distance: 255 miles
Padstow-Rock Ferry
It’s good to be back on the (other) coast again. It’s somehow been two months since I wandered down into Padstow with my soggy jacket hung on the back of my rucksack to dry out in the June sun. I’ve got to the point where day walks are no longer feasible due to the length of time it would take me to get to and from my start and end points. I didn’t manage to get two days off work together during July excepting one occasion when it was so hot I couldn’t even sit in my back garden in Falmouth for more than five minutes let alone endure ten plus miles of strenuous coast path. Continue reading
the north Malvern Hills from Herefordshire Beacon
Travelling northbound on the M5 the long ridge of the Malverns looms close on the westward horizon: a line of undulating peaks like the back of a great geological beast embedded in the land running North-South along the Worcestershire-Herefordshire border. One day, while wandering through the livestock exhibits of the Three Counties Show in Great Malvern right at the feet of the hillss Cee looked up and saw people walking along the top of the ridge and decided she wanted a go. Ok, I said, let’s do it. When do you want to go? Continue reading
