The Day Before the Storm
It was Thomas Heaton who’d shared the fact that there might be something worth visting at the bottom of the Exmoor uplands on the North Somerset coast. Most of the YouTube gurus I follow are based in the North of England, an area that takes a day of travel to get to from here, so it was quite rewarding to find one of them suddenly turning up in the South West. Not exactly on my own patch you understand, but near enough to think of it as local turf that we might reasonably get to in an outing. I love watching the likes of Danson, Heaton and Turner scouring the distantly dramatic landscapes of Cumbria, North Yorkshire and plenty more besides, but those places are just so far from home – in fact almost everywhere is a long way from here. I usually rely on some of you to show me the best of the world beyond the Tamar. One day I’ll head north and gatecrash your party armed with a bagful of camera gear. I promise.
The petrified trees of Porlock were certainly enough of a draw to be added to the proposed itinerary for the February trip to Somerset. It seemed that if we were lucky enough to have a spring tide high enough to make it over the big bank of shingle at the back of the beach, the marsh upon which they’d died might even be flooded. It was apparently for this reason that they are in their current condition. Unarguably past resuscitation, but forever preserved in salt. The wellies were duly included in the inventory just in case. I watched Tom’s video again, just a couple more times to see whether I could learn anything. In the preparations for the trip, a deal of hasty research took place on the subject of spring tides, a topic that none of us seemed to have spent much time studying before. But our visit to the area coincided nicely with the presence of the new moon that we had learned was the key ingredient to the possibility of us getting our feet wet once or twice.
As it happened, the tide times didn’t work. Those short winter days have their benefits for us togs, but nearly sixteen hours of blackout would pretty much cover all of the high tides. Call us half-hearted if you will, but we’d just about managed to crawl out of bed early enough to crawl over the dunes and be gratified by the arrival of a spring tide that washed beneath the stilts of Burnham Lighthouse. Porlock was that bit too far away to be certain of a result. It looked close enough on the map, but I’d driven much of that road before and past experience was telling me it would take an age to get to the car park before making the boggy hike to the site in total darkness. Still, we agreed we’d probably go there – after all in their minimalist setting the trees would be worth seeing whether they were surrounded by the Bristol Channel or not. Maybe we’d make it our last port of call on the way back home to Cornwall on the Friday afternoon. It seemed a bit of a trek to have to retrace our tyre treads all the way back to Burnham after all. Besides which, I was the driver and I didn’t want to spend the better part of three hours driving when daylight time was at a premium.
In the event, “Friday” came a day early as the imminent arrival of Storm Eunice concertina’d our plans. After a successful Thursday morning at the lighthouse, it was agreed that with the promise of a torment that might overturn high sided vehicles on motorways, it may be sensible to stay indoors for the big show, cowering under a table wearing a crash helmet and thermal underwear. Possibly other clothing too. The reservation meant that we would have to leave our digs on the day of the storm and head straight into the face of the oncoming tempest, and as you get older you become more intent on continuing life’s journey for as long as you possibly can. Besides which, I rather like the look of my car in its intended shape and condition – although it does need a wash. It wasn’t the first time we’d managed to book a photography trip in the middle of all hell breaking loose across the land either. Two years earlier, we’d hidden in our rented cottage at the edge of Snowdonia, at one point watching a seagull flying backwards past the living room window, courtesy of Eunice’s cousin Ciara. Quite how we’d managed to engineer such a situation on two consecutive adventures I’m not sure, but it was suggested we avoid February next time we do this. It’s so often the month when winter announces her exit with a tantrum or two.
It was a predictably long drive to Porlock, a pretty village surrounded by big Exmoor hills, seemingly cut off from the world and happily so at that. A bit further and we were at the weir, faced by one of those frightening car parks that threatens to drain your life savings if you mistype your registration number into the machine or wait for more than four nanoseconds before engaging with it and paying the fee. From here we ambled back along the lane, to the edge of the beach and then onto the salty marsh, where we trudged slowly and squelchingly around the sodden perimeter towards those skeletal shapes in the distance. It took a while, but we were glad we made the effort. Just the odd soggy jogger or dog walker pottered past as we lost ourselves in compositions, only the falling light and the ticking clock on that parking ticket eventually forcing us back towards the end of the trip.
The drive home commenced with an almost endless thirty mile dawdle through the darkness along narrow lanes beneath the drenched woodland canopy of Exmoor. Quite what breathtaking scenes we were missing will only be discovered if any of us are ever feeling bold enough to tackle that road to Tiverton in daylight, but I’m not sure I really want to. I’ve rarely been so pleased to see a motorway, and I’ve rarely been so relieved to end an adventure earlier than we’d really wanted to. The next day I hid under the bed, having given up looking for my cycle helmet (it was later discovered in the garage) as Eunice battered the world outside, bending the sycamores in the garden almost to breaking point and attempting to lift the solar panels from the roof and launch them into the neighbours’ gardens. News came through that an articulated lorry had indeed been overturned on the southbound carriage of the M5, holding up traffic for some hours, roughly at the time when we might not have been far behind it. I hope the driver got over the ordeal. Some togs were brave enough to get out and capture the action, but it wasn’t for me. Live to set up the tripod another day I think. After all, we need to get back to Porlock Marsh on a spring tide one fine day.
The Day Before the Storm
It was Thomas Heaton who’d shared the fact that there might be something worth visting at the bottom of the Exmoor uplands on the North Somerset coast. Most of the YouTube gurus I follow are based in the North of England, an area that takes a day of travel to get to from here, so it was quite rewarding to find one of them suddenly turning up in the South West. Not exactly on my own patch you understand, but near enough to think of it as local turf that we might reasonably get to in an outing. I love watching the likes of Danson, Heaton and Turner scouring the distantly dramatic landscapes of Cumbria, North Yorkshire and plenty more besides, but those places are just so far from home – in fact almost everywhere is a long way from here. I usually rely on some of you to show me the best of the world beyond the Tamar. One day I’ll head north and gatecrash your party armed with a bagful of camera gear. I promise.
The petrified trees of Porlock were certainly enough of a draw to be added to the proposed itinerary for the February trip to Somerset. It seemed that if we were lucky enough to have a spring tide high enough to make it over the big bank of shingle at the back of the beach, the marsh upon which they’d died might even be flooded. It was apparently for this reason that they are in their current condition. Unarguably past resuscitation, but forever preserved in salt. The wellies were duly included in the inventory just in case. I watched Tom’s video again, just a couple more times to see whether I could learn anything. In the preparations for the trip, a deal of hasty research took place on the subject of spring tides, a topic that none of us seemed to have spent much time studying before. But our visit to the area coincided nicely with the presence of the new moon that we had learned was the key ingredient to the possibility of us getting our feet wet once or twice.
As it happened, the tide times didn’t work. Those short winter days have their benefits for us togs, but nearly sixteen hours of blackout would pretty much cover all of the high tides. Call us half-hearted if you will, but we’d just about managed to crawl out of bed early enough to crawl over the dunes and be gratified by the arrival of a spring tide that washed beneath the stilts of Burnham Lighthouse. Porlock was that bit too far away to be certain of a result. It looked close enough on the map, but I’d driven much of that road before and past experience was telling me it would take an age to get to the car park before making the boggy hike to the site in total darkness. Still, we agreed we’d probably go there – after all in their minimalist setting the trees would be worth seeing whether they were surrounded by the Bristol Channel or not. Maybe we’d make it our last port of call on the way back home to Cornwall on the Friday afternoon. It seemed a bit of a trek to have to retrace our tyre treads all the way back to Burnham after all. Besides which, I was the driver and I didn’t want to spend the better part of three hours driving when daylight time was at a premium.
In the event, “Friday” came a day early as the imminent arrival of Storm Eunice concertina’d our plans. After a successful Thursday morning at the lighthouse, it was agreed that with the promise of a torment that might overturn high sided vehicles on motorways, it may be sensible to stay indoors for the big show, cowering under a table wearing a crash helmet and thermal underwear. Possibly other clothing too. The reservation meant that we would have to leave our digs on the day of the storm and head straight into the face of the oncoming tempest, and as you get older you become more intent on continuing life’s journey for as long as you possibly can. Besides which, I rather like the look of my car in its intended shape and condition – although it does need a wash. It wasn’t the first time we’d managed to book a photography trip in the middle of all hell breaking loose across the land either. Two years earlier, we’d hidden in our rented cottage at the edge of Snowdonia, at one point watching a seagull flying backwards past the living room window, courtesy of Eunice’s cousin Ciara. Quite how we’d managed to engineer such a situation on two consecutive adventures I’m not sure, but it was suggested we avoid February next time we do this. It’s so often the month when winter announces her exit with a tantrum or two.
It was a predictably long drive to Porlock, a pretty village surrounded by big Exmoor hills, seemingly cut off from the world and happily so at that. A bit further and we were at the weir, faced by one of those frightening car parks that threatens to drain your life savings if you mistype your registration number into the machine or wait for more than four nanoseconds before engaging with it and paying the fee. From here we ambled back along the lane, to the edge of the beach and then onto the salty marsh, where we trudged slowly and squelchingly around the sodden perimeter towards those skeletal shapes in the distance. It took a while, but we were glad we made the effort. Just the odd soggy jogger or dog walker pottered past as we lost ourselves in compositions, only the falling light and the ticking clock on that parking ticket eventually forcing us back towards the end of the trip.
The drive home commenced with an almost endless thirty mile dawdle through the darkness along narrow lanes beneath the drenched woodland canopy of Exmoor. Quite what breathtaking scenes we were missing will only be discovered if any of us are ever feeling bold enough to tackle that road to Tiverton in daylight, but I’m not sure I really want to. I’ve rarely been so pleased to see a motorway, and I’ve rarely been so relieved to end an adventure earlier than we’d really wanted to. The next day I hid under the bed, having given up looking for my cycle helmet (it was later discovered in the garage) as Eunice battered the world outside, bending the sycamores in the garden almost to breaking point and attempting to lift the solar panels from the roof and launch them into the neighbours’ gardens. News came through that an articulated lorry had indeed been overturned on the southbound carriage of the M5, holding up traffic for some hours, roughly at the time when we might not have been far behind it. I hope the driver got over the ordeal. Some togs were brave enough to get out and capture the action, but it wasn’t for me. Live to set up the tripod another day I think. After all, we need to get back to Porlock Marsh on a spring tide one fine day.