Stormy Tuesday Blues
“Whereabouts are you?”
“I’m just passing through Hayle on the way to Godrevy.”
“I’m on my way. Look out for a big red van.”
That thing that I had been expecting to do had just dissolved away into thin air, and suddenly the afternoon ahead of me was free. Lloyd was halfway through his autumn visit to Cornwall, and I’d suspected his target for this very damp Tuesday afternoon was the one I spend so much time at – the one eleven and a half miles down the road. Within ten minutes of the phone call, the van was loaded with camera gear, tea bags, milk and water and I was on the way to Godrevy for our second outing together that week. The rain lashed relentlessly against the windscreen, but let’s be positive about this. Brenda’s sunroofs are watertight and while the windscreen wipers work perfectly well at full bore, the intermittent option has never functioned since she came into our lives. Good old Cornish mizzle is a pain when I’m driving her, but in proper rain the wipers do the job they’re supposed to. And this was proper rain doubled, squared and then doubled again for good measure.
By the time I arrived at the National Trust car park, the heavy rain had turned into a ten thousand metre high waterfall direct from the heavens onto Brenda’s roof. You have two options here outside high summer. Either you can bank what you already have and pull up in the main car park, or you can gamble and try the twelve spaces along the single track road towards the big field – the big field that’s always closed when Cornwall isn't rammed solid with holidaymakers. Those twelve coveted spaces offer a much shorter hike to the lighthouse. I gambled and failed. All of the parking spaces was filled with vehicles of varying sizes, each of them sheltering morose looking occupants from the vicious squall that seemed as if it might be with us forever. And so in ignominious fashion I reversed and crawled forward and reversed and crawled forward however many times it needed for me to point her in the opposite direction, until we could trundle back to the banker’s position. I tried to get out and start walking, but another fierce volley sent me back to Brenda’s warm cab before I’d even reached for the camera bag. From there I phoned one of the morose occupants up in the hallowed twelve spaces, and said I’d sit out the squall before joining him. And so the hard rain continued for some time.
Eventually, as the deluge began to ease, a message came through advising me that a couple of spaces had been vacated. Of course this didn’t mean they’d still be empty by the time I got there, but I hadn’t noticed anyone else drive in that direction for a while, and so I tried again, fully aware of the fact that if I were successful, part of the bargain would be that I’d need to neatly reverse more than six metres of van into a space that it would fill rather more entirely than any of the other vehicles parked there. So nobody was more surprised than myself when I produced a perfect display of parking in front of the no doubt terrified drivers on either side of me. Now I was one of the lucky morose twelve. Lloyd’s car was parked two spaces to the left of me. Quite what any of us felt we could gain from being here in these conditions I’m really not sure.
Although it was still raining, things were now at least manageable, and we decided to brave the elements, heading for the clifftop shelf where we’d last sat together on a sunny April evening earlier in the year. And with as many waterproof garments as we could muster, we slipped and slithered over wet rock as we settled onto stony seats, fifty feet above a frothing sea where grey seals frolicked for fun. For an hour or so, we took long exposures as the worst of the weather remained at sea, sheets of rain advancing over St Ives Bay beneath saturnine clouds that filled the sky with deep blue bruises. Terrible weather so often produces fantastic light if you’re prepared to sit and suffer for a while. It didn’t let us down here either, as for a moment around sunset, soft colours light the horizon.
And then Andy joined us. For a moment we thought it might be a flying visit. Quite literally, as we imagined him sliding along the shelf and straight over the edge, but then again, Andy is Cornish born and bred, and knows these rocks even better than I do. Despite almost bumping into each other more than once recently, it was the first time I’d met Andy, a man who relies entirely on his iPhone and apps that create long exposure images from hundreds or even thousands of individual frames. You’ll have to ask Lloyd if you need to know more. But if you see a man wearing shorts (whatever the time of year), and bearing a red tripod with a phone mounted on it, that’s Andy. He’s all over Vero, but not Flickr I’m afraid. I’ve tried to persuade him.
Not long after the third member of our gang had arrived, darkness also decided to make an appearance – along with another heavy drenching from the skies. As we slipped back to the clifftop, and trotted the half mile back to our vehicles, the soaking was intense, and I cursed my failure to remember my waterproof trousers. But there are two great things about campervans in weather like this. One is a diesel heater that warms the space in minutes, and the other is what you can produce with tea bags, milk and water – with the aid of the onboard kettle and gas stove of course. You can't beat a brew to chase away the Stormy Tuesday Blues.
Stormy Tuesday Blues
“Whereabouts are you?”
“I’m just passing through Hayle on the way to Godrevy.”
“I’m on my way. Look out for a big red van.”
That thing that I had been expecting to do had just dissolved away into thin air, and suddenly the afternoon ahead of me was free. Lloyd was halfway through his autumn visit to Cornwall, and I’d suspected his target for this very damp Tuesday afternoon was the one I spend so much time at – the one eleven and a half miles down the road. Within ten minutes of the phone call, the van was loaded with camera gear, tea bags, milk and water and I was on the way to Godrevy for our second outing together that week. The rain lashed relentlessly against the windscreen, but let’s be positive about this. Brenda’s sunroofs are watertight and while the windscreen wipers work perfectly well at full bore, the intermittent option has never functioned since she came into our lives. Good old Cornish mizzle is a pain when I’m driving her, but in proper rain the wipers do the job they’re supposed to. And this was proper rain doubled, squared and then doubled again for good measure.
By the time I arrived at the National Trust car park, the heavy rain had turned into a ten thousand metre high waterfall direct from the heavens onto Brenda’s roof. You have two options here outside high summer. Either you can bank what you already have and pull up in the main car park, or you can gamble and try the twelve spaces along the single track road towards the big field – the big field that’s always closed when Cornwall isn't rammed solid with holidaymakers. Those twelve coveted spaces offer a much shorter hike to the lighthouse. I gambled and failed. All of the parking spaces was filled with vehicles of varying sizes, each of them sheltering morose looking occupants from the vicious squall that seemed as if it might be with us forever. And so in ignominious fashion I reversed and crawled forward and reversed and crawled forward however many times it needed for me to point her in the opposite direction, until we could trundle back to the banker’s position. I tried to get out and start walking, but another fierce volley sent me back to Brenda’s warm cab before I’d even reached for the camera bag. From there I phoned one of the morose occupants up in the hallowed twelve spaces, and said I’d sit out the squall before joining him. And so the hard rain continued for some time.
Eventually, as the deluge began to ease, a message came through advising me that a couple of spaces had been vacated. Of course this didn’t mean they’d still be empty by the time I got there, but I hadn’t noticed anyone else drive in that direction for a while, and so I tried again, fully aware of the fact that if I were successful, part of the bargain would be that I’d need to neatly reverse more than six metres of van into a space that it would fill rather more entirely than any of the other vehicles parked there. So nobody was more surprised than myself when I produced a perfect display of parking in front of the no doubt terrified drivers on either side of me. Now I was one of the lucky morose twelve. Lloyd’s car was parked two spaces to the left of me. Quite what any of us felt we could gain from being here in these conditions I’m really not sure.
Although it was still raining, things were now at least manageable, and we decided to brave the elements, heading for the clifftop shelf where we’d last sat together on a sunny April evening earlier in the year. And with as many waterproof garments as we could muster, we slipped and slithered over wet rock as we settled onto stony seats, fifty feet above a frothing sea where grey seals frolicked for fun. For an hour or so, we took long exposures as the worst of the weather remained at sea, sheets of rain advancing over St Ives Bay beneath saturnine clouds that filled the sky with deep blue bruises. Terrible weather so often produces fantastic light if you’re prepared to sit and suffer for a while. It didn’t let us down here either, as for a moment around sunset, soft colours light the horizon.
And then Andy joined us. For a moment we thought it might be a flying visit. Quite literally, as we imagined him sliding along the shelf and straight over the edge, but then again, Andy is Cornish born and bred, and knows these rocks even better than I do. Despite almost bumping into each other more than once recently, it was the first time I’d met Andy, a man who relies entirely on his iPhone and apps that create long exposure images from hundreds or even thousands of individual frames. You’ll have to ask Lloyd if you need to know more. But if you see a man wearing shorts (whatever the time of year), and bearing a red tripod with a phone mounted on it, that’s Andy. He’s all over Vero, but not Flickr I’m afraid. I’ve tried to persuade him.
Not long after the third member of our gang had arrived, darkness also decided to make an appearance – along with another heavy drenching from the skies. As we slipped back to the clifftop, and trotted the half mile back to our vehicles, the soaking was intense, and I cursed my failure to remember my waterproof trousers. But there are two great things about campervans in weather like this. One is a diesel heater that warms the space in minutes, and the other is what you can produce with tea bags, milk and water – with the aid of the onboard kettle and gas stove of course. You can't beat a brew to chase away the Stormy Tuesday Blues.