Living in Cornwall on the August Bank Holiday weekend brings its own challenges and problems.  Don’t get me wrong I love the tourist industry, without it I wouldn’t be able to live in Cornwall, but trying to get through Camelford has become a complete nightmare.  So instead of going to see friends I thought I’d get off my ass and go for a walk up Rough Tor (which is pronounced Router).  It’s not as high as Brown Willy (trust me, that is what it’s called and how it’s pronounced) but it’s closer to home and it’s been years since I’ve been up to the top. So 10:30 am there I am in the car park with 4 other cars, looking at the summit 1.5km away thinking “oh dear, I really didn’t remember it being quite so high up!”.  About an hour later I’m stood at the top, having stopped to take pictures all the way up, not just stopping to catch my breath and trying to not die, honest. At this point, I’m reminded how lucky I am that this wonderful spot is just a 15 minute drive from my house. From the top you can see all the way to the south coast and the closer north coast, but that does need a really clear day.  Today wasn’t clear enough, but I still managed to get some great shots of the rock clusters, the horses and the view in general, even a iPhone taken shot of Camelford and Delabole.  Most of the shots I took, I used the trick of setting the exposure (half pressing the shutter control button) on the sky before tilting the camera back down the rocks/landscape.  This gave me a nicely exposed sky and dark rocks, which I could fix in Lightroom later.  I’ve found too often that I’d rather have the sky right and then lighten everything else rather than trying to do it the other way.  Other people may want to do things differently but this works for me at the moment.  I’m still learning and trying new techniques, I’ll even listen to advice from others which might surprise one or two who think they know me.

Just half hour to descend back to the car park as I watched a number of people heading in the opposite direction and on arriving in the car park, I found no spaces, which surprised me.  Heading back home to process the shots I’d taken there were lots of car heading in the opposite direction up to Rough Tor (there’s nothing else there to drive that road for) and I had to laugh at the number of visitors who seemed “surprised” by the passing places on the single track road.  They are easy to spot, they fly past the passing places at 40 mph and make a complete pigs ear reversing back into them.

Most importantly, I managed to take 70 odd photos and hopefully I’ll have 20 good ones once I’ve stuck everything in Lightroom and tweaked the exposures. Might even have been worth the blisters on my feet 😀