I wasn’t really expecting anything out of the ordinary when I went for the 5am wee wee I must admit. It was cold; not unusually so for the middle of January, but when I peered out into the orange pre dawn gloom, the sight of falling snow caught me by surprise. Normally we get warnings from excited weather forecasters on the local news, but nothing had prepared us this time. “Have you looked outside?” I asked Ali as I returned to our warm bed. “Yes,” came the whispered reply; she’d just been for her 4:55am wee wee, and had also noticed that the back garden was mostly white. The front garden was even whiter if anything, with two cars and a big red van sporting brand new snowy coiffures that glowed through the darkness. “I suppose I’d better get up for sunrise then,” I concluded. There were still more than three hours to go though. The decision made, I lay on my back and pondered on possible sunrise locations. There was the lane that linked the two nearest woodlands, where I’d taken “Sunrise at the Gate” on New Year’s Day a couple of years earlier. Maybe I could try that again? Where else could I go? I wasn’t really sure. I’d have a think. And then I went back to sleep and woke up again later as the first weak rays pierced their way through the gaps in the heavy dark bedroom curtains. “Fait accomplit,” as they say in the Dordogne.
We don’t get snow in Cornwall as a rule. Not in the west where we live at any rate. And if it does snow, it almost always melts by lunchtime. In fact, since we arrived in 1975, there have only really been three instances I can recall where the snow arrived and stayed put for any length of time. Quite how we survived those white knuckle rides down the ridiculously steep Trelawney Road in Falmouth on home made sledges during the big freeze of 1979 I’ve really no idea. Dad had fitted the runners with old bits of plastic curtain rail that made them even faster. If just one car had attempted to make any progress at all it would have been curtains. On curtain rails. Ironic really. In 1987 my return to University after the Christmas holiday was delayed by a fortnight as we found ourselves confined to barracks, watching “Gregory’s Girl” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” every night on the VCR. They were the only films we had, and 35 years later my siblings and I can still recite almost every line from both of them. Once I was daft enough to open the front door to bring the coal in. It took half an hour of swearing to close it again. And then five years ago we were visited by the Beast from the East. Three work free days of wondering around in confusion as I tried to work out how to take photographs in the snow.
And there lies the rub with snow. Down here we’re just not used to it, and the roads are usually filled with panic stricken commuters leaving early at the first falling flakes. In 2018 I decided the car was staying on the drive as I explored the local woodlands on foot. Yesterday we started in the same vein, as Ali and I went for a long walk around the usual haunts, enjoying the strange silence that snowfall so often brings. I was armed with my camera, convinced that it wasn’t cold enough for the snow to last. I’d decided to make things interesting by limiting myself to the lens that has been woefully neglected since the 100-400 arrived on the scene. The 70-200 was in the bag for Madeira last February without a moment’s hesitation, but it got outranked by its new big brother for the autumn trips to Iceland and Lanzarote. It was a diverting walkabout, and one or two of the images were nice enough, but nothing was causing the space time continuum to go into overdrive. By half past two we were hungry and headed home for lunch. But one thing that hadn’t escaped us was that the snow was still thick on the ground, especially in the empty fields on higher ground, and by now the temperature was starting to fall again. Another thing we’d noticed was that the roads were absolutely fine, perhaps because many people had woken up to a world in white and decided to award themselves a day off work. Quite why it took so long for the prospect of an almost unprecedented sunset snowscape to dawn on me I can’t say, but when the penny dropped, it was accompanied by a rush of excitement as I rapidly made plans. And so it was, that shortly after a bowl of Ali’s home made winter soup, I cleared the snow from my car and drove the couple of short miles to park by the old engine house at the foot of Carn Marth.
It’s not a location I’ve bothered to take photos from all that often, but from its lofty position it does have the distinct advantage of overlooking the slopes of Carn Brea a few miles to the west, where I was hoping the sun might be setting. And the white blanket does do a marvellous job of disguising distractions, such as houses, farms, roads and other evidence of humanity. Try and photograph this sunset scene without snow and you’ll be praying for every silhouette and shadow under the sky to darken the patchwork of confusion in front of you. The small number of times I’d been up here with the camera before now proved themselves to be useful scouting missions, as I knew exactly where I wanted to set up the tripod. Well almost, as it seemed my failure to consult the PhotoPills app was going to lead me slightly off topic. The sun wasn’t going to be setting anywhere near Carn Brea, but instead was throwing crepuscular rays across the white tops of the fields below the Four Lanes mast. I’d never really thought about photographing the local telecommunications mast before, but there you go – follow the light. In fact, I’ve given you two for the price of one. That pole in the foreground wasn’t going anywhere, so I decided I might as well make a feature of it. Not the first time my picture has been full of pylons recently in fact. It was only after the best of the light that I found another vantage point from which I could have excluded foreground wires. But you know what? I rather like it.
Last night I set the alarm for sunrise, so convinced was I that the snow would still be on the ground at least for the first few hours of the new day. I even managed to get out of bed and peer out of the window. I can’t say whether or not I was relieved by the overwhelming sight of green, with only a few fast melting patches of snow left on the boggy mass that passes for our front lawn at this time of year. I went back to bed. At least I’d got some shots from the previous evening to play with. It could be years before we have snow here on the ground again. Then again it could be days. I’d better keep everything ready for sudden early morning outings.
