Walk This Way
I thought I’d finished with this group of images from the couple of days we spent around the Wirral during that strange spell when winter very briefly returned and hung over a chilly Merseyside. But after sharing one of the images from the Marine Lake at West Kirby, I was reminded that I had taken a handful of shots the previous day - the afternoon when we arrived at the Morrison’s Café to find it had closed for the day. With coffee denied, we parked alongside the waterfront. At least it wasn’t raining anymore. The lake was full of furious activity, windsurfers racing across the heavily rippled surface at dizzying speeds, their bright sails the only washes of dazzling colour on this grey afternoon at the seaside. We ignored the signs and squirmed under the railings, where we took long exposures of the pontoons, our backs to the strong wind that by now had chased us across the landscape for more than twenty-four hours, protecting our cameras and those precious thirty second files on the SD cards. By now it was approaching five, and we were due at Perch Rock to meet Rebecca at half past seven. Before heading there, we needed to return to barracks for a reset, which we determined should include a hot drink and a supply of biscuits and chocolate at the very least. But before doing so, I might just walk along the path around the lake a bit. Just to see what I could see.
There’s something about these places with marine lakes and large lidos overlooking the coast. They almost seem to relax the population into a collective sense of contentedness - something in the water therapy theories about it being good for the soul. I know a little about this because my daughter, who somehow managed to carry on being a student until she was nearly thirty and is more educated than the rest of the family put together, made this topic the subject of her final masterpiece before she joined the real world and started actually working for a living. I feel better when I’m by the water, whether it’s a stream or river, a lake or an ocean. Don’t you? West Kirby has a particularly fine, and huge, marine lake. A home for the local water sports club with enough space to charge about on all manner of wind powered craft, it’s a soothing place to be. Even on a day such as this. And if windsurfing isn’t your thing, you can take the mile and a half long path that encircles the water.
I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, many of the locals used this path for their daily constitutional. Not in so many words that white marker on the tarmac says “walk this way,” in an anticlockwise direction, and don’t breathe within shouting distance of anyone else. Today, on a bleak May afternoon when a white shroud covered the heavens in every direction as far as the eye could see, nobody else was on the path as I wandered along the section between the lake on the left and the tidal mudflats to the right. For a while I clambered down the protective boulders to the edge of the mud to examine compositions of a lone marker post, and when I climbed back onto the path, my subject had arrived. A lone walker ambled down the black path towards the west, disappearing into the void over a distant patch of ghostly white that almost made him seem as if he were walking on water. The moment was too good to miss. No filters, no long exposure; just a gloomy black and white moment on a day when with the exception of those bright sails on the lake, the colours had all but disappeared. Dave and Lee had been taking more shots of the pontoons and those spectral blurs on the water. It was time for that reset. We’d been out since the morning, on the way to and back from Talacre, which was now just a spot on the horizon at the edge of the North Wales coast.
On reflection, I might yet return to the files from this surprisingly bountiful spell of grim weather beside the Irish Sea. That session at Crosby Beach on a bristling afternoon was quite productive, you know. And then there were the two visits to Perch Rock, and the shots from the dunes at Talacre that I haven’t really looked at too carefully before. Much like the area itself, there’s a lot more than at first meets the eye. Maybe another mini series is set to follow. I’ll keep you posted.
Walk This Way
I thought I’d finished with this group of images from the couple of days we spent around the Wirral during that strange spell when winter very briefly returned and hung over a chilly Merseyside. But after sharing one of the images from the Marine Lake at West Kirby, I was reminded that I had taken a handful of shots the previous day - the afternoon when we arrived at the Morrison’s Café to find it had closed for the day. With coffee denied, we parked alongside the waterfront. At least it wasn’t raining anymore. The lake was full of furious activity, windsurfers racing across the heavily rippled surface at dizzying speeds, their bright sails the only washes of dazzling colour on this grey afternoon at the seaside. We ignored the signs and squirmed under the railings, where we took long exposures of the pontoons, our backs to the strong wind that by now had chased us across the landscape for more than twenty-four hours, protecting our cameras and those precious thirty second files on the SD cards. By now it was approaching five, and we were due at Perch Rock to meet Rebecca at half past seven. Before heading there, we needed to return to barracks for a reset, which we determined should include a hot drink and a supply of biscuits and chocolate at the very least. But before doing so, I might just walk along the path around the lake a bit. Just to see what I could see.
There’s something about these places with marine lakes and large lidos overlooking the coast. They almost seem to relax the population into a collective sense of contentedness - something in the water therapy theories about it being good for the soul. I know a little about this because my daughter, who somehow managed to carry on being a student until she was nearly thirty and is more educated than the rest of the family put together, made this topic the subject of her final masterpiece before she joined the real world and started actually working for a living. I feel better when I’m by the water, whether it’s a stream or river, a lake or an ocean. Don’t you? West Kirby has a particularly fine, and huge, marine lake. A home for the local water sports club with enough space to charge about on all manner of wind powered craft, it’s a soothing place to be. Even on a day such as this. And if windsurfing isn’t your thing, you can take the mile and a half long path that encircles the water.
I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, many of the locals used this path for their daily constitutional. Not in so many words that white marker on the tarmac says “walk this way,” in an anticlockwise direction, and don’t breathe within shouting distance of anyone else. Today, on a bleak May afternoon when a white shroud covered the heavens in every direction as far as the eye could see, nobody else was on the path as I wandered along the section between the lake on the left and the tidal mudflats to the right. For a while I clambered down the protective boulders to the edge of the mud to examine compositions of a lone marker post, and when I climbed back onto the path, my subject had arrived. A lone walker ambled down the black path towards the west, disappearing into the void over a distant patch of ghostly white that almost made him seem as if he were walking on water. The moment was too good to miss. No filters, no long exposure; just a gloomy black and white moment on a day when with the exception of those bright sails on the lake, the colours had all but disappeared. Dave and Lee had been taking more shots of the pontoons and those spectral blurs on the water. It was time for that reset. We’d been out since the morning, on the way to and back from Talacre, which was now just a spot on the horizon at the edge of the North Wales coast.
On reflection, I might yet return to the files from this surprisingly bountiful spell of grim weather beside the Irish Sea. That session at Crosby Beach on a bristling afternoon was quite productive, you know. And then there were the two visits to Perch Rock, and the shots from the dunes at Talacre that I haven’t really looked at too carefully before. Much like the area itself, there’s a lot more than at first meets the eye. Maybe another mini series is set to follow. I’ll keep you posted.