Cornwall, a photographic adventure 1

Recently I have had 3 weeks on my own while Alan went on a cycle extravaganza in Mallorca. I thought it would be exciting to spend a week in Cornwall, just myself, the dog and the camera. And so I booked a cottage, not right on the coast but around 15 miles inland near St Breward on the very south fringe of Bodmin Moor. I stayed in a little group of holiday cottages situated on a farm, Hallagenna, where apparently the black horse of Lloyds bank fame had been raised. This backed on to a piece of moorland known as Lady Down Moor. Here I stayed for 6 nights, leaving on the Friday so that I could join Alan in Mallorca for his final week.

I was lucky with the weather, too lucky as it turned out as most days there was little cloud cover. Photographers are never happy with the amount of cloud they get!

The first morning I was up early and out on the moor to get the sunrise (around 6.40am). I did this most mornings and basically got almost the same pictures as the weather conditions did not change much. This first morning I photographed the pre-dawn sky and then fussed about taking some pictures of a bit of gorse, not noticing that the sun was coming up like a great ball in the sky behind me. I quickly put on my 70-200mm lens and got the second photograph below, looking over the mist on the lower land before the higher areas of moor, Rough Tor and Brown Willy.

I have spent  many weeks on holiday in Cornwall, but always in the Falmouth, Lizard area, and I do not know North Cornwall at all. So it was a bit like sticking a pin in a map when it came to deciding what to do for the day. I had bought a book of shortish walks in Cornwall and there was information in the cottage I had scanned through. I was limited a little by aged dog Hettie, but it transpired she could walk around 4 miles as long as things were taken slowly, and with the camera slow was the way forward. I had had a look through Flickr to see general pictures of the coastline but I do not like looking at other photographs before I get to places as I like to approach things fresh, with my own eyes.

I picked on Constantine and the coast path south of there for this first day. And it was a truly wonderful walk, past black rocky outcrops and islands, and facing south west into the sun made for some great contra-jour effects later on in the day.

You park in a small area by Constantine Bay and being a fine Sunday the parking was pressured, I got the last spot and people were having to turn away. The walk starts going over the headland past the rock platform of south Constantine Bay.

Once over the headland you descend to the broad sands of Treyarnon where you have to cross a little stream before climbing again on to the cliff top and across to Porthcothan Bay.

We ate our sandwiches at Treyarnon and pressed on to Porthcothan where my walking guide book said that you are supposed to take the road back to Constantine Bay. Hettie was getting tired and I did not fancy dragging her along the road, so we did not descend on to the beach at Porthcothan but rather turned and retraced our steps to Constantine, stopping at the only tea place open, the Youth Hostel in Treyarnon for a reviving piece of cake.

Here are the pictures of the views from the cliff top looking towards Porthcothan.

My main photographic focus of this walk was to make some intentional camera movement photographs which I thought would help to abstract the landscape and also to even out the contrasts of this incredibly bright day. ICM and multiple exposure photography also always responds well to water with lots of highlights dancing over the surface. I will post these pictures in the next blog and then proceed to Constantine Bay for sunset.

But finally a couple of oddities. First a super modern house than sits on the cliff top near Treyarnon and then the herringbone pattern of a Cornish wall, normally covered with earth and vegetation.