Rides bikes, paddles sea kayaks, takes pictures. Life on the road & my home in Cornwall.
Autumn
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Autumnal pictures and ramblings of minimal consequence....
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;”
– John Keats (To Autumn)
For centuries poets, and instagrammers, have waxed lyrical about autumn; had Keats spent his days in 21st century Cornwall however would his words have carried such romance, and perhaps if he had and they did, I might have thought he could get stuffed. Increasingly I notice1 that autumn is simply the rapid transition, usually with the arrival of the first of an endless procession of storms, from a damp and windy summer, to a persistently wetter, and windier winter, and marked by the onset of a heavy dankness whose weight descends as the sun, when it’s visible, sinks lower in the sky.
It is remarkably restorative to visit the moor and be able to survey a scene devoid of people and cars.
September and the first half of October are often sunny and warm, an extension of summer, albeit with shorter days, but the trees remain in leaf, the roads and trails dry (mostly), and the sea warm. That is until the arrival of the first of the big storms, usually around mid-October, which brings rain, wind, and a general gloom that sets the scene, with little respite, for the following 4 months or so as the green of the trees is rapidly replaced by the distinctly unpoetic creeping green of the algae that seems to settle across any surface left alone for more than a few days…
10th September, the “last ride”… The weather was warm and hazy with low cloud. It was a good ride but I was feeling distinctly ’empty’ and off-form. The following day everything ached…
I missed out on that last gasp of fine weather this year, a dose of what was probably Covid2 in early September with left me too fatigued to function much beyond eating and sleeping for a few weeks, and watching with envy while friends set off on the last of the season’s adventures; hence the lack of words recently. Six weeks on some energy is returning but I have to be careful, riding is still limited to a few steady miles with utterly empty legs a couple of times a week, and a day ambling about the moor, such as on Friday this week, requires a couple of days of feeling somewhat wrecked after. I’m terrible at being sick and it’s been a challenging few weeks however as a consequence of being forced to take things easy there are a few pictures that might as well see the light of day before consignment to a dusty corner of a hard drive.
A slash of emerald among the tree-tunnels near Grumbla. It was a wet summer and the greens were intense.It was a meandering ride all over Penwith. The nature of riding on a peninsula means it is inevitable that I pass the Crown Mine engine houses quite frequently..Stone Crop (I think..) spreading across a wall in St Buryan.Indian Summer. A wander on the beach by way of escaping confinement up until then. That dog very much “living his best life” (even tho I hate that phrase…)The afternoon felt like a rare treat, with the summer crowds gone I feel free to visit, and with the weather holding its breath before the arrival of the inevitable storm, harbinger of winter.Determined to escape a growing depression I joined a couple of mates for a paddle along the eastern side of the Lizard. It was a good day, but I did pay a price for a few days after. Worth it however :-)Numbers of Portuguese Men’O War around here are increasing with the warming seas. This specimen was the largest I’ve ever seen, 9-10 inches in length. Beautiful colours belie the severity of the sting from its tentacles, which can reach up to 100ft in length.Mid-October.. that storm arrived on schedule, and it has barely stopped raining since.I do enjoy the dramatic skies; when the weather isn’t the usual uniform drizzly grey. Perhaps Keats would have written about those… maybe he did.Bodmin Moor, looking across at Roughtor from Showery Tor.Work has felt relentless for months, a situation exacerbated by not being able to escape by bike from time to time. In an attempt to claw back some balance, on Friday I grabbed a friend for a day rambling up on the moor.We were lucky, the forecast was rough but the storms largely seemed to be passing by to the south east of the high ground. I don’t often make the trek up here; it’s a fair way from the far west and, being privately owned, there are no cycling opportunities on Bodmin Moor, so with Dartmoor just another half hour up the road it’s more appealing to just go there.The view east from the top of Brown Willy.. Cornwall’s highest point at 1,378 feet / 420m asl. The name comes from the Cornish language “Bronn Ewhella”, meaning “highest hill”.The view south. It is remarkably restorative to visit the moor and be able to survey a scene devoid of people and cars. It is not a natural landscape however, consistently over-stocked with sheep that graze the crap out of it and prevent the establishment of any shrubs or trees, and hence any kind of balanced ecosystem. It is a wet, man-made desert.The plaque on the summit OS trig point. Looking up the reference number indicates it was put here in 1937.The legacy of millennia of wind, rain, and frost carved into the granite.The few hawthorn trees in the sheltered valleys are bearded with lichen, and weighted with an abundance of berries. It’s very noticeable this year how abundant the berry harvest is, a consequence of a warm, wet summer perhaps.
Finally, to wrap this up for the weekend, I should probably have spent more time on the sofa but you know, cabin fever, so went for a mooch in Porthleven for an hour before the call of a mug of tea and slab of cake became too insistent.
The procession of deep Atlantic lows switched on as expected, and there is no let-up in sight with another one sweeping in the second half of this coming week. Big tides at the moment too, which combined with the storm surge, are causing widespread flooding in coastal communities.Good for the wave watchers I suppose….Lost in thought…By way of some context – the view south to Gunwalloe
1The winters of 2006-07, 2013-14, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2018-19, and 2019-20 were all in the Top 10 warmest winters in the UK, and 2006-07, 2013-14, 2015-16 and 2019-20 were in the Top 10 wettest years.. 2 I didn’t have any tests, but had I done so it would not have meaningfully changed anything. I wasn’t going out anywhere at all.
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10 thoughts on “Autumn”
This is such a perfect post – always feel humbled by your photography.
Sorry to hear about your (probable) COVID. I had it at the end of September, then followed by an actual cold. Thankfully neither was horrible. This was my second COVID bout, and they fell into crappy cold. The flu I got a few years back was worse. But sickness killed a lot of my vim and vigor for adventure over the past month, so I feel ya.
Also: If you are using WordPress Block Editor, there is now an option to create footnotes very easy. It even links to the footnote and brings you back to the main text after reading.
hey, cheers!
re block editor, it’s not, this is just a quick theme I threw together a few years ago that I’ve not had the time or inclination to work on. I’ll do something more with it when work eases off.
hey.. using both x100 and X-Pro2. The first set, the ride, are x100f; beach is also x100f. Kayaking x100s; Bodmin Moor X-Pro2 + 23mm f2; Porthleven X-Pro2 + 56 f1.2.
Hi mate, just arrived back in OZ after visiting family in Eastbourne at the end of October and start of November. And your images capture the mood I felt whilst there. Snatched moments between rain squalls and the already short days, I cannot imagine what mid winter is like. Really makes me appreciate the climate/lifestyle we have in our corner of OZ.
Still your brilliant images and words really capture the best of your plot.
hey cheers! I find as I get older I find the winters harder to deal with, I don’t think that’s just me, the winters are becoming wetter, windier, and just generally grimmer. I do my best to embrace winter but usually by late December I’ve had enough…
I think this kind of thing can hit anyone at a certain age, even if they’ve lived in the same place/climate most/all of their lives. A friend of mine from Minneapolis finally got sick of winter, so every year he’s been heading to Tucson for a few months in the dead of winter. I can’t blame him, as Minneapolis has possibly the “realest” winter that can be found. I’m thankful that here in Portland it can be grey and damp but the temperatures are pretty mild, and it’s only a two hour drive to the High Desert where more sun can usually be found (though it can be cold).
I used to enjoy Montreal winters.. and those were harsh, but… the sun shone from time to time, and winter backcountry stuff was great. Few places do ‘damp’ quite like the western half of the British Isles… and it’s hard to escape it. Very envious of your easy access to desert!
This is such a perfect post – always feel humbled by your photography.
you’re too kind sir, too kind!
Sorry to hear about your (probable) COVID. I had it at the end of September, then followed by an actual cold. Thankfully neither was horrible. This was my second COVID bout, and they fell into crappy cold. The flu I got a few years back was worse. But sickness killed a lot of my vim and vigor for adventure over the past month, so I feel ya.
Also: If you are using WordPress Block Editor, there is now an option to create footnotes very easy. It even links to the footnote and brings you back to the main text after reading.
hey, cheers!
re block editor, it’s not, this is just a quick theme I threw together a few years ago that I’ve not had the time or inclination to work on. I’ll do something more with it when work eases off.
Lovely set!
Are you still mostly using your x100?
And, the colours of that Portuguese Man’O War is wild!
hey.. using both x100 and X-Pro2. The first set, the ride, are x100f; beach is also x100f. Kayaking x100s; Bodmin Moor X-Pro2 + 23mm f2; Porthleven X-Pro2 + 56 f1.2.
Hi mate, just arrived back in OZ after visiting family in Eastbourne at the end of October and start of November. And your images capture the mood I felt whilst there. Snatched moments between rain squalls and the already short days, I cannot imagine what mid winter is like. Really makes me appreciate the climate/lifestyle we have in our corner of OZ.
Still your brilliant images and words really capture the best of your plot.
Cheers.
Steve.
hey cheers! I find as I get older I find the winters harder to deal with, I don’t think that’s just me, the winters are becoming wetter, windier, and just generally grimmer. I do my best to embrace winter but usually by late December I’ve had enough…
I think this kind of thing can hit anyone at a certain age, even if they’ve lived in the same place/climate most/all of their lives. A friend of mine from Minneapolis finally got sick of winter, so every year he’s been heading to Tucson for a few months in the dead of winter. I can’t blame him, as Minneapolis has possibly the “realest” winter that can be found. I’m thankful that here in Portland it can be grey and damp but the temperatures are pretty mild, and it’s only a two hour drive to the High Desert where more sun can usually be found (though it can be cold).
I used to enjoy Montreal winters.. and those were harsh, but… the sun shone from time to time, and winter backcountry stuff was great. Few places do ‘damp’ quite like the western half of the British Isles… and it’s hard to escape it. Very envious of your easy access to desert!