Cornish Curves… looking out from our holiday farmland to a particularly sinuous hedge,
rising above Stithians Lake (our local reservoir and bird sanctuary)

The area is rightly renowned for its mining heritage, which transformed the Cornish landscape throughout the Industrial Revolution - a time when global demand for copper and tin spawned very big business. Yet this once-booming endeavour is now reduced to industrial relics, the county’s ruined Engine Houses offering iconic reminders of bygone days. And poignantly, even these are slowly but surely being reclaimed by nature… as illustrated by the tangle of trees in the above image of Tyacke’s Shaft.

Trewavas Mine

While Tyacke’s Shaft is discretely tucked away in the Cornish countryside, the mine workings at Trewavas Head (near Porthleven) stand proudly atop granite sea cliffs… conforming much more strongly to the idealised archetype. Here I’ll offer three different images of Trewavas, effectively variations on a single composition. The first is an appropriately ‘ghostly’ black & white (can you spot the ‘ghost coast’ phantom?), with the second featuring a fully formed apparition. Yet the third is presented as ‘best’… a 17-second exposure thankfully stripped of my earlier selfie shenanigans!

This was clearly a beautiful yet hostile working environment, right up until the mine’s abrupt closure back in 1846 - apparently, due to the sudden flooding of shafts beneath the seabed. The modern photographer’s clifftop plight seems trivial by comparison! :-0

Kynance Cove

Now that I’m focusing on the Cornish coast, I’ll stick with this theme and move to a special place on the storm-lashed Lizard peninsula. It’s a destination which captures the essence of Cornwall like nowhere else, even without featuring in an age-old Mann family anecdote (which I won’t go into here!). And if ever a name was begging to be recited in a pirate accent, it’s surely this one: Kynance Cove.

I was lucky enough to visit Kynance Cove just before sunset - and while sundown itself was nothing spectacular, I was there at evening high tide on the day after a storm. You might call it the magic of ‘Eventide’.

It’s not an experience to be easily forgotten - and if the National Trust car park hadn’t closed at 7pm, I’d probably be there still! :-)

Godrevy Island

The final afternoon of our Cornish holiday allowed an opportunity to delay the inevitable packing and instead visit Godrevy Cove, to photograph the nearby island of the same name. I hadn’t ever explored here before, although I’d regularly admired the island - and its prominent lighthouse - from across the bay on Hayle Sands.

And like Kynance Cove, Godrevy Island featured in old Mann family reminiscences of the area - only a minor connection, perhaps, yet enough to add that spark of motivation to an already alluring subject.

Others clearly felt the same way, as tourist boats seemed drawn to the island like magnets (despite the fact that this was a weekday in early October). A small yellow one can be seen in my first exploratory snap…

Having pottered around the shore of Godrevy Cove for a little while, it was only toward the end of my visit that I found what I was looking for: a chasm in the rocks which perfectly framed the lighthouse. Here was my opportunity to sign off the trip with something archetypally Cornish! :-)

I decided to smooth the water by applying a polariser and filter, giving a 30-second exposure which I hoped would lend a suitable degree of tranquility to my impromptu theme of ‘Light at the end of the tunnel’. Yet my pebbly tripod stance was awkward, while the exposure itself could be tricky (shooting as I was from a dark place into bright sunlight). I also wasn’t sure which zoom level would work best, and only had time for three shots before the rising tide forced a hasty retreat. But hopefully they came out OK - I’ll present all three below, and let the viewer decide which is preferred…

Light at the End of the Tunnel
(Godrevy Lighthouse, Cornwall)