September 2020 - Clovelly

We were staying in Devon and we took the opportunity to go to Clovelly for the day. Although we have been going to Cornwall for many years, we had never been here – maybe we have thought it too far from Padstow for a day trip, I don’t know. The village is privately owned and extremely pretty. To get in you have to park up at the top of the cliffs and walk down (via a tourist shop and café!) to the harbour. That may not sound like much, but the walk down is very steep and on cobbled stones; fortunately, it wasn’t wet that day otherwise the local hospital would have needed a whole lot of orthopaedic surgeons to fix the breaks. You walk through a charming village of shops and houses – homes to many and available for rent in some cases. 

It was a lovely day and the views and surroundings were really photogenic. The harbour looks as if it is still used for fishing from, and there is a long breakwater. While my wife enjoyed the café at the water’s edge, I walked along the breakwater to the end. Looking back at the village and cliffside behind, there were beautiful, chocolate box pictures to be had. So, here is my addition to that genre!

Photographers can be a bit snooty about ‘chocolate box’ photos – they are ‘merely’ pretty and don’t necessarily have the compositional or technical merits of the best pictures. Well, I don’t know how you feel, but ‘pretty’ does quite well for me! This particular photo does do quite well on the composition side too – with the harbour, the shore-side buildings and the rest making up three layers. And it’s sharp – in focus. But regardless of all that, it is a picture that brings back a day of happiness.