Hinterland

I have some more photos for you today, from three different places: two that hum with the ancient history of Cornwall, with structures and landscapes that have stood since before anyone alive now can remember, and one that was made from nothing by human hands, not that long ago, and filled with things that would never have grown here on their own, which is a magic all of its own.

This stretch of Bodmin Moor, near the village of Minions, is one of my favourite places in the whole of Cornwall. The landscape is full of reminders of the area's mining past, and even bronze age stone structures, but the land seems to belong again now to the livestock who graze there, and personally, I find the sound of baaing sheep to be a perfect accompaniment to exploring old engine houses. 

These photos do not do Boscastle justice. It's a beautiful little fishing port but more importantly, it is home to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from the museum, but I highly recommend it as a day out. Tickets are just £5 for adults and the building is stuffed full of hundreds of weird artefacts, supposedly with magical pasts. It's worth the £5 just for the cards describing some of the exhibits, written by the man who originally opened the museum. All I can say is that he took a very opinionated view on some of the items.

I think it's almost impossible to live in Cornwall and not have visited the Eden Project more times than you can count, but still I manage to find interesting things to photograph every time, which is good, because I have a locals' pass, which means I'm probably not going to stop visiting it any time soon.

These two little birds are roul-roul partridges, who roam freely in the rainforest biome. Every time I go to Eden I try to get a picture of them, and every time they run away too fast for me and my camera, but not this time! I am extremely pleased that I finally managed to capture two of them.

Sea & Shore

This is a photography post. That's it. I mentioned in my last post that I didn't use my digital camera at all last year, and in the post before that that I had hundreds of unedited photos sat on my desktop, waiting to be edited. The two things are definitely linked but let's not look into that too deeply right now. The point is, I've finally started editing those photos. I am finally starting to pick away at the string holding the albatross of unedited pictures around my neck. And that's what this post is. A collection of pictures, from around Cornwall, that have been waiting to be edited and uploaded for more months than I really care to think about. I'm flinging that albatross into the blue, Cornish sea.

I think if this blog has proved one thing over the years it's that metaphors aren't my strong suit, and that albatross thing is no exception but, to be fair, that very much isn't one of mine. I hope you enjoy the photographs.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep this momentum going and there will another blog post a bit like this, with a few other Cornish places, very soon. In the mean time, I've also finally figured out why I was unable to reply to comments on my own posts for awhile, and I can again now, so let me know if you've ever been to any of these places, or which one you most like the look of if you haven't! I'll warn you now, St Ives may look pretty, but the seagulls there are savage. One took my tofurky and cream cheese sandwich right out of my hand and clipped me next to my eye on the beach in that fifth photo. Vicious.