A new host this week, Scillagrace (Priscilla Grace) who invites us to present a “Getting To Know You” post showing your relationship with a subject you’ve photographed. The subject could be a Person, a Place, a Culture, an Object…anything that has captured your attention, won your affection and taught you a thing or two.
My love affair with the south-west began many years ago as a child on holiday. The long drive down from the north of England when there were few motorways was not my favourite part as I suffered badly with travel sickness. But once we had arrived in our caravan in either Dorset, Devon or Cornwall I was entranced.
Wind forward 50 years or so and dreams of a move to the south-west were becoming a reality. Several holidays in Cornwall helped us decide where it was we wanted to live. And that was practically the end of the country. West Penwith.
The toe of England, the bit that weather forecasters always put their arm across, the extreme south-west which gets battered by the Atlantic storms scudding across the Celtic Sea .
Where Land’s End lies.
And mermaids sigh.
For some reason the wildness and openness of this part of the country appealed to us. It’s rural charm and tin mining history, patchwork fields and Cornish hedges, tiny fishing villages and remote beaches are endearing, though maybe not so much during the school holidays when the population rises dramatically and roads are choked, car parks full and beaches heaving.
Living in the countryside in a hamlet of less than twenty houses you start to notice nature.
The weather.
The clouds.
The sunsets and sunrises.
Wildflowers.
It has a very different character to the rest of Cornwall; it feels almost like an island. Remote villages and hamlets are strung along one of the most beautiful roads in the land between St Just and St Ives.
And travel is slow due to tractors, trucks, German campervans, French motorhomes, sharp bends and drystone granite walls that you desperately try to avoid at all costs when reversing into a ‘passing place’. The unhurried pace gives you time to catch a glimpse of
A blue-green sea.
The tumble-down mine.
A white-washed cottage.
Golden sands.
The narrow lanes and Cornish hedges are full of wild flowers such as Sheep’s bit Scabious and Pennywort.
Frothy cow parsley.
Towering foxgloves.
Red campion (which is really pink).
Starry stitchwort(Lesser and Greater).
English bluebells
and Montbretia.
I have spent a lot of time photographing my neighbourhood in the five years since I moved here. I have learned the names of plants that I had never seen before and I even spent an entire year recording nature in a monthly photographic blog journal. I don’t think I have ever in my entire life come to know a place as intimately as I have with this one.
Or love it as much.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #145 | Getting to know you
Cornwall in Colours 
Your home and landscapes are so lovely, so beautiful, Jude. Your ode to them is as well. Much love…hope to visit one day if life returns to something like it used to be. Thank you for this lovely post. ♥
Thanks A-C – I do get a bit frustrated sometimes as we are so far from anywhere else, but then again that is the charm of the place.
Yes – everything has at least two sides to it. ..
Was für ein wunderschöner Ort. Es scheint, als sei er am ende der Welt angesiedelt. Man spürt deine ganze liebe zu diesem Platz und mit deiner Beschreibung bringst du die Menschen dazu, diesen Ort ebenfalls kennen lernen zu wollen.
Liebe Grüße
Kasia
Thank you Kasia, it is a beautiful place that’s for sure, I’m glad you felt my love for it.
I love to see your wall hedges. The picture with the stones in the foreground is sensational. The sky, the light, the subject – everything.
One of my January inspirations – looking at the clouds and the light.
Definitely a live story! Favourite pictures is Lanyon Quoit Ding Dong mine, not just for its artistic merit but because I remember being there.
*Sigh* why do I never check things? Love story!
Well it is live. Sort of.
Do you know we still have not been to Ding Dong? Must remedy that.
We did a circular walk taking in some ancient stones too.
Yes. That’s what we need to do.
Such beautiful landscape. No wonderful why you love this place.
Thanks Rupali. The landscape is lovely. So much open space.
Really interesting to read this, Jude, and how you came to both love and live in Cornwall
Closest part of the UK to South Africa though Northumberland’s beaches come close.
An intriguing thought process – the sea wouldn’t feature in mine, but woodland would and probably a patchwork of fields too
It is just so beautiful!
Thank you!