Someone has to provide the entertainment don’t they? It was all going on at Portreath as Kathleen thrashed the cliffs, the beach and the Monkey Hut at high tide on an exhilarating Saturday afternoon. By now we’d stood on the cliffs beside the pepperpot, and we’d watched the action from Dead Man’s Hut, where we had to queue patiently for a front row view. Finally, we headed down to the beach. Not on the beach - that wasn’t happening unless you were wearing a wetsuit, preferably with a long leash tied around an ankle with the other end tethered to a bollard in the car park. But on the small esplanade between the car park and the beach, reduced to shingle after a particularly vigorous winter season.

I don’t come to Portreath that often. It’s not even five miles away from our front door, but I have a habit of overlooking it, despite the obvious attractions. In warmer months I’ve often coasted down the cycle trail for an ice cream on the front before puffing my way back up the slope in a very low gear, sometimes stopping for coffee at the farm campsite and cafe that friends of mine run. Occasionally there will be some form of family gathering there, usually for a child’s birthday party in summer. But apart from that, I just pass on through, usually heading for Godrevy, and then only if in an idle moment I’ve decided to take the coast road. But when there’s a storm, this is the first place I always think of. Porthleven on the south coast often has the biggest waves, but I rarely drag myself over that way.

I should really come to Portreath more often. The crumbling coastal path in both directions remains largely unexplored on my part, and I suspect there are some rather good views along those cliffs that change with every passing winter as another few hundred tons of loose rock slide into the ocean. From here it’s a short but strenuous hike east to Porthtowan, or a slightly longer one to Godrevy, via North Cliffs and Hell’s Mouth. Another famous landmark where I’ve never taken a photo. What on earth have I been doing, you might ask?

As storms go, Kathleen was a tame puppy in comparison to some of the hoolies we’ve witnessed here. There’s no way some of the monstrous assaults on our coastline would have seen surfers taking to the water, but nine or ten of them were already bobbing about on the waves when we arrived, and another was about to join the party. Or was he? For fifteen or twenty minutes he edged back and forth - never coming inside or anywhere near the third in my frame I might add - watched by a crowd of day trippers who’d come to enjoy the elements in the couple of hours during which it had somehow remained dry. I’d already changed from the long lens, set up the tripod and popped a filter on, hoping to catch the sea dragging back around his ankles, and now I was just willing him to stand still, at least a teensy bit in from the edge of the frame as I clunked away at the shutter with each receding carpet of white foam. Finally he saw something that the rest of us couldn’t, and plodded off into the water. With a winter wetsuit and a pair of fins on his feet, I could only imagine how exciting it would be to nail those waves today. Not long afterwards it began to rain hard, and we raced back to the car and headed home to put the kettle on.

I love how this one turned out, with the bodyboarder gazing enigmatically out to sea, calculating the conditions as he waits. The first thing that I liked was the wake created in the surf as the water flowed back around our hero’s legs. That alone made this my instant choice from the group of shots I took here. But when I looked closer on the big screen, everything about the day was here. Another roller about to explode extravagantly over the poor maligned Monkey Hut on the end of the breakwater. A wall of white spray groping for holds on the side of the porous cliffs, on top of which sits the lonely Pepperpot. A car driving up Lighthouse Hill, seemingly oblivious to events going on around it. And if you look in, you’ll see the huddle at the Dead Man’s Hut, some of them armed with expensive camera gear, while others are just enjoying the experience. And just below them, the young man leaning over the railings with a woman near him thinking she’s safe. Just a few exposures later, the space is swamped by a wave - I’ve seen plenty of people take a soaking there on days like this. I’m sure some of them do it for kicks.

If ever you asked me to show you a picture that described the place, I’d look no further. Visceral, effervescent, bristling with white water, and always some crazy soul armed with a board, prepared to take it all on for that unforgettable ride. This is Portreath and it’s never dull.

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Normally Lee and I would be shaking hands with Lloyd on arrival, but at that precise moment, all three of us were balancing precariously on dinosaur eggs. Well not really dinosaur eggs, but enormous oval granite boulders, some of which have a habit of wobbling furiously if you're not paying attention. The beach here consists almost entirely of them - apart from the deep band of seaweed that has spread itself evenly across its width towards the cliffs since I was last here. As for the cliffs - standing anywhere near them really isn’t recommended, neither on top nor below. After you've struggled onto the beach, gaze up and you’ll see for yourself how even the smallest straw on the camel’s back of erosion would bring a deadly volume crashing down on top of your head. It’s never been an easy beach to navigate, and it’s gradually getting more challenging.

Lloyd was already here by the time we arrived, sitting behind his tripod in front of a composition he’d been lining up with his phone the previous afternoon. Our visiting friend was staying within walking distance of the celebrated cobbles, and although he told us it was a holiday with his wife rather than one of his regular autumn pilgrimages to Cornwall, he’d brought the camera along to keep himself entertained. He’d arrived in a pair of wellies that were sending me a radioactive shade of green with envy - Vibram soles on wellies for goodness sake! “What else would you ever need?” I hear you ask. Needless to say, by the time we stopped at the pub on the way home I was comparing the options on your favourite shopping app. Ever since that story of the cracked polariser from Vestrahorn, Mr Bezos is always on the phone asking me to promote stuff. Probably.

Porth Nanven is one of those places that I think I go to all the time, but when I looked through my archives, the last visit was eighteen months ago, almost exactly to the day. Just after my granddaughter Sennen was born. That afternoon, I drove off down to Sennen Cove in tribute, bought a rum and raisin flavour ice cream, sat on a rock feeling all misty eyed about becoming a grandad, decided there was nothing doing on the photography front and headed here instead. So my last visit was an afterthought - and guess what? Not one of the forty-five raw files has been anywhere near the editing suite. Forty-four if you discount the one with two of my fingers blighting the frame. Either I was reminding myself I’d just done a twin shot focus stack or I was commenting on what I thought of my own photography that day. Prior to that, I’d been here in the middle of the summer, just a couple of weeks before Lee and I set the compass for Iceland. Only two of those had been dragged through the software, and they were hardly inspiring.

So what is it with Porth Nanven? As locations go, even for Cornwall it’s pretty well unique with its blanket of dinosaur eggs, shaped and smoothed to perfection by countless Atlantic seasons. But perhaps the first paragraph tells the truth in part. Add the fact that the boulders at the water's edge are generally covered in messy tangles of seaweed, the beach is often full of footprints, both human and canine, the movement of the tide changes your carefully thought out compositions every five minutes, and maybe that’s why I don’t come here so often these days. Break an ankle on those cobbles and there’s no phone signal to help you out either. What I have concluded (and I’m not alone in this) is that it’s best to go at low tide, when the shoreline stays roughly in one place for a slightly longer period of time, and if you’re lucky, you might get some untouched sand in front of you. Although you'll probably be picking stray lumps of seaweed out of the way once you’ve set up your shot, whilst trying to keep off the sand. You can always spot the photographers here. We hop from boulder to boulder like oversized penguins, trying desperately to avoid leaving footprints.

And then it’s just a question of trying to maintain balance. Not only on the cobbles in your Vibram soled wellies, but also in your ever changing compositions. In two and a half hours I raced through a number of them, some that I liked, while others looked as if they might topple in either direction when I examined them on the big screen at home.

I came away with some more shots that almost worked - new ideas to return to next time. And it won’t be eighteen months away either.

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Augustus Gloop would have loved this. Remember him falling into the chocolate river and being escorted off the premises in ignominy by a team of Oompa Loompas? Well at least he would have loved it here if he were a real person rather than a fictional visitor to Willy Wonka’s magical emporium somewhere on the other side of Roald Dahl’s imagination. In fact so would a lot of people. I’d have been in there myself, filling my wellies with the stuff and taking it home for elevenses. There’d be no chance of getting a shot at all - at least not one that wasn’t filled with gourmands groaning over their excessive compulsions, lying on their backs with their feet waving in the air, distended bellies shifting uncomfortably. Probably a good job it’s not chocolate then - just a mixture of freezing water and sand, flowing across the beach at low tide in bumps and ridges that catch the eye and the imagination in bucketfuls. And instead of filling my boots with chocolate, I was crouching here in them, surrounded by the racing water, with plenty more of it falling from the heavens. But I like a challenge, and besides which, I was in good company today. And I’d fortified myself with a flaky steak pasty from my local Cornish Oven. They didn’t have chocolate flavour that day.

Instead of young Master Gloop, Charlie Bucket and co, I was here with Lloyd on his first togging adventure at Holywell Bay. And to add some further wisdom to the proceedings, we were joined by a certain Mr Pedlar. You know him don’t you? A man who embodies the purity of the Cornish spirit - although to my knowledge he hadn’t brought any Spingo along with him (you’ll have to look that up if you’re none the wiser - just hold onto your hats and your breeches if you give it a try). It was one of those days where you just have to embrace what the elements are throwing at you, grin cheerfully and put your shoulder to the wind. And wear waterproofs of course - lots of them. By now I was clad from head to foot in things to keep me dry, planting my tripod in the ever shifting riverbed on the sand. Even the flow of the water changes with every moment on afternoons like this here. Sometimes it’s flat and benign, spreading artfully across this wonderful canvas in gentle ripples, and then suddenly a series of ridges rise up like a serpent breaking the surface, moving along its course in one direction or the other and beguiling the senses.

I’d decided to have another try with the crop body and the recently acquired budget lens - a combination that had mysteriously broken down on its first ever outing when I was last here and an error code appeared on the screen and refused to go away. Since then it had somehow cured itself, and the screen gave me no further cause for complaint - I was keen to persist, as unlike the display on my full frame camera, this one flips out and does the hula, allowing me to see what it is I’m taking a picture of without kneeling down in five inches of icy water and craning my neck over to one side. Throw on your choice of filter, tap the screen where you want to focus, wait two seconds and then let nature take care of the rest. Oh yes, and the editing suite. And while that wide angle lens doesn’t quite deliver the sharpness of the one I mount on the other camera, it’s good enough. Good enough to allow me to see a pinnacle on the rocks that I’d never spotted before. I don’t visit this location quite as often as I might, but I’m here often enough, and always finding something new. Add to this the fact that the river seems to plot a different course across the sand at low tide with every visit, and it’s never dull.

Once I’d sifted through the images and lost the ones where the rain spots rendered them unusable, I was still left with enough material to deliver a record of the chocolate river. And with a suitable gap created by white clouds that separated Carter’s Rocks from the rest of the scene, it was just a case of picking the one with the most interesting textures in the foreground. One that featured the serpent.

I fancy some chocolate now. Nothing too ostentatious, just a few thousand gallons of it pouring past me so I can dip in a flagon now and again and do a bit of Glooping of my own. Without overdoing it of course. Wouldn’t want to come to a sticky end like Augustus did. Pun probably intended…………

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Mostly we hid behind the rocks, patiently waiting out the brisk volleys of rain that were driving straight towards us and hampering good intentions. At one moment I was caught in the deluge, a rapidly spreading sensation telling me that I might have put my waterproof trousers on rather than carrying them around in the bag. At least the camera was hidden under a shower cap, liberated from some budget hotel bathroom earlier in the year. As the heavens abated, I pulled the trousers on in undignified fashion before putting the bright yellow rain repelling backpack cover onto the camera bag. Feeling slightly damp on the inside, I clambered over the rocks to where the others were quietly plotting. At least I wouldn't get any wetter now. “You take this business quite seriously don’t you?” said Brian. “Well I’m among giants. I need to put on a good show today,” I replied. To which my colleagues chuckled gently and muttered in self deprecation. But I was in the company of two photographers whose work I’ve long admired, no matter how much they might protest at my attempts to flatter. I had no intention of letting the side down. I hope I didn’t fail them.

Finally, after some years of exchanging banter and passing comment on one another’s posts, I was meeting a man who brings a warm smile to so many of us as we read the latest outlandish tale about village life somewhere up the north coast, and giggle at the meandering yarns on the subject of his wandering menagerie. A menagerie that was noticeable by its absence on this particular outing, I might add. “Where were Horace and Hoof?” we asked. “Hiding indoors,” appeared to be the answer to that one. Today, courtesy of Lloyd, another Flickr luminary with whom I’ve become good friends on his last few visits to Cornwall, here was a certain Mr Pedlar, standing in the rain on Holywell Bay Beach beside his tripod, chattering away happily about life, the universe, the great mirrorless debate and all that. None of us had ventured across the gear divide just yet, and we each agreed that what we were using still did the job well enough. With a quiet modesty, the King of Trebormint Strand merely thanked me with a shy smile as I gushed my enthusiasm over some of his recent shots. Such is his generosity that he even offered me the loan of the set of spare clothes he always keeps in the car for when the conditions get a bit fruity.

As we loitered in the shelter of the rocks, Lloyd or I would occasionally break ranks to explore the possibilities and line up potential compositions. This was Lloyd’s first visit as a tog, and he was understandably keen to size the place up before the light got interesting. I had my eye on another watery foreground image, having brought the same gear that had failed when I was here with Steve on a hot September evening a couple of months earlier. Happily the fault seems to have gone away now. And while we occasionally buzzed about with photographic intent, Brian just waited. “Fifteen minutes,” he replied when I asked him whether the camera was coming out today. Each time I went out, I was soon sent scurrying back as rain spots appeared on the image in the viewfinder.

In the event we all lined up in a row, twenty or thirty yards between us as what colour there was bounced off the glistening sand and back into the clouds. And for fifteen or twenty minutes the rain stayed away, spreading over the sea but sparing us and our cameras any further soakings as we took our shots. As the clouds darkened, a bright patch of reflected light remained, keeping us behind the viewfinder until a final squall brought proceedings to an end.

Contentedly, we trooped back across the beach towards the car park, glad to have been out here on a day like this, embracing the elements and chewing the cud. Well, chewing flaky steak pasties from the Cornish Oven anyway. At least Lloyd and I were. From Brian’s description, his own lunch had been rather more organic. But although you know him to be a man of few words, I’ll let him tell you all about that.

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“At this rate we’ll probably all get washed away before summer.” Neil’s gloomy assessment as we drove home from Wednesday evening’s five a side session through the rainy streets didn’t seem such a wild exaggeration. By now I’d been back from Fuerteventura for three weeks, and as far as I could recall, only one day had passed when the heavens hadn’t opened for business. Even though we play indoors, my football boots were feeling distinctly damp, just from navigating the puddles along the path from the leisure centre entrance to the car park. At home, the garden looks like a marshland, and the front of the house is surrounded by a moat. Useful if we get besieged by politicians once the election is called I suppose, but other than that it’s really getting a bit much now. More rain forecast for tomorrow, and another named storm as well - even though we're on the other side of Easter now. I keep expecting to find ducks living on the side of what used to be the lawn. Will it ever be dry again, I wonder? Just let South West Water try and bring in another hosepipe ban this summer and see the natives revolting. Or the revolting natives.

At least I made something of that one dry afternoon - heading for the usual spot for the first time in over a month. The van was in need of an outing, and I fancied brewing a cup of tea and sitting down to watch the sea through the opened side door. Sometimes I just like to watch and listen, with a book close at hand, and hopefully some chocolate biscuits hidden in a drawer that haven’t gone over their sell by date. I had a stack of images from my holiday to keep me occupied, and I wasn’t particularly bothered about adding to the archive today. It was only as I made ready with the tea bags, milk and water that I remembered what happens when I don’t take the camera - I’ve still not forgotten the blood red sunset at Porthtowan the previous winter when the bag had been deliberately left at home. Into the overhead cab it went, although I had no real intention of using it. I hadn’t even looked at the tide times, nor had I consulted the weather forecast other than to confirm that it looked as if I’d be staying dry for a change. I’d also failed to check on the battery in the camera - hopefully the spare in the bag was fully charged.

It was high tide in the middle of the afternoon when I flipped over the switch to the reassuring hiss of butane filling the copper pipe that feeds the hob. As the kettle steamed its way to a whistling crescendo, I looked out at a grey sky, thought to myself “black and white,” and promptly settled down with my book. It was only three o’ clock, and there was plenty of time to take a stroll over the dunes and perhaps take some photographs. And then it struck me that I’d taken a couple of sighters on my phone towards the end of last summer before dumping them into a folder called “compositions” for another time. Both of them were taken on a nearly full tide from the rocks below where I was now parked. Perhaps this was the time to give them a try. After my tea, I sauntered down to the beach.

Half an hour later I was back at the van, boiling the kettle again. I’d taken a few shots to keep myself amused, but the spot I needed to get to was out of reach for the time being - at least it was if I didn’t want to wade through two feet of water sloshing through the gulley that separates this group of rocks from the beach when the tide is full. No matter though - I’d go back, have another cuppa, read another chapter and head back down a bit later. Not having to rush anymore is such a simple joy these days. Sometimes you have to stop and remind yourself of these easy wins in life.

And so here I was - looking along a crack in the rocks that I must have passed hundreds of times before and never noticed until last September. The cloud had lifted to reveal a pastel blue sky to offset the orange in the rocks, while the sea rushed in and out of the space below. Little did I know that we’d have two weeks and counting of pouring rain to follow, so it was probably a good job I did grab the camera before setting off towards the ocean that day.

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