A Couple of Exposures!

God it was dreary weather, dull as dish water and equally wet. I sat in the van, overlooking the grey Irish Sea , where cloud and mist merged with ocean across an invisible horizon. The windscreen wipers slipped to and fro across the dropletted glass, but to be honest, successive swipes revealed no more clarity of view. I was waiting for something to happen, anything to happen. I had abandoned plans to trek up Gyrn Du as the mountain had disappeared and had been replaced by a light grey wall of hill fog almost descending to sea level.

"Illuminated Ocean" Irish Sea © Glyn Davies 2012 - Prints HERE

I climbed into the back of the van and fell asleep for half an hour, after listening to the pelting of the rain on the van roof. When I finally felt refreshed I climbed back into the front seat and noticed a small car had turned up on my left. A single woman sat in the drivers seat. A minute later, a man turned up in a fast car. He parked alongside, looked at the woman then left his car and entered hers. The seats went back, hair was stroked and figures reclined lower in the vehicle. I noticed the first signs of bright light on the sea, a glow at first, then actual, momentary sunbeams. I saw this flashing of light as my signal to leave, and two heads turned to watch me go.

The road climbed higher up the hillside towards the fog line but the greyness was being punctured severely and rapidly, with floods of light gushing from the holes and spilling onto the dark sea. I was transfixed. I pulled the van over at a hillside gateway and entered a field, from where the performance became a vista. The whole show only lasted around 10 minutes before multiple shades of grey became one again.

The van at Nant in fog (iPhone) © Glyn Davies 2012

I headed towards Nant Gwrtheyrn where I hoped I would find dramatic views from headlands to sea, but the fog was already waiting for me. I couldn't even hear, let alone see, the dramatic waterfall at Craig Ddu, behind the sound-proof low cloud barrier. I turned the engine off and left the van. I could hear tiny streams all about me. The trees were motionless, saturated and dripping with condensed water vapour. I couldn't see their tops, just the dark trunks and rich lush pine needles forming a steep wall into to the void above. There was silence in every other respect, no birds, no sheep, no sounds of humans or vehicles. I loved the surreal melancholy of weather and place.

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