I awoke on my second morning in Exmoor National Park at around 6ish in the hope that I would be treated to a decent sunrise. Peering out from the tent, it looked pretty good, there was some cloud about but lots of clear patches as well, which was a perfect recipe for a cracking sunrise.
It was all the motivation I needed to struggle into my clothes in the cramped confines of my canvas abode, and motor on over to the Punchbowl. A dramatic hollow in the surrounding countryside, which is itself in a valley. The nature of the landscape and some of the deposits within it, suggest that it may represent scarring from the only glacier in southwest England during the Pleistocene age. The most recent of earth’s ice ages, that lasted from two and a half million to eleven and a half thousand years ago.
Whatever caused it, left behind a very comely vista, and a perfect spot for a bit of photography, so bravo. When I arrived, the sun hadn’t yet imparted any colour into the sky, as can be seen from the above image, so I had time to pick a spot and get set up.
I took another visit to one of my favourite places a couple of weeks ago, namely Exmoor National Park on the northern coast of Devon, for a few days of photography.
I was camping so had my fingers crossed for decent weather, as it turns out my crossed fingers don’t hold much sway with the weather gods, it seems they were intent on chucking down a good amount of the wet stuff, despite my humble orison.
But on the plus side, changeable conditions do favour the courageously valiant photographer, assuming courageously valiant means willing to get a bit damp, and I was. As it happens, between the rain showers there were patches of warm sunshine to light up the landscape, along with some superb cloud formations, so not all bad.
On the first morning I was up for sunrise without delay, I wanted to get over to a little lane I happened to know that curves and meanders over the moorland, and to a spot where it traverses a trickling brook, for what I hoped would be a bucolic view into the park.
After a very disturbed night, thanks to the seemingly endless rain tap tap tapping on my taut tent topping, I wasn’t up that early, not that there was much to be up for, the rain was still continuing its cascade of damp misery. So after a leisurely breakfast, by which time the clouds had taken on a more cheery countenance and the sun was finally awake, I took a drive over the moors to the coast, and Porlock Common.
Porlock Common is a fetching piece of land that comprises meadows of heather and a patchwork of trim, hedge lined fields upon rolling landscape, all situated right on the coast. It encompasses all of what makes Exmoor such an appealing place, in a way that very few spots in the National Park manage to do. And it was looking very fine in the morning light.
