Bulletin 70, Along a Snowy Edge, 17 January 2010
It’s 6:30 am, as I crunch along snow-covered pavements, now and then going through a motion not dissimilar to aquaplaning across an exposed patch of ice. Arms wind milling and legs and feet slip-sliding. In this fashion, I eventually reach the outskirts of town and start my climb into the South Downs in the pre-dawn murk. It’s Saturday, cold and a grey mass has taken up residence in the sky. Everything is covered in snow.
The crunching underfoot seems louder now that I am out of town. As the roads have been snowed in and cloaked in ice the only mechanical sound to be heard is the occasional commercial jetliner, passing over-head. I make my way to the edge of the Downs and head for Beachy Head. At times, the snow is surprisingly deep and requires some effort to trudge through.
I pass Beachy Head and its lighthouse in favour of pushing on to Birling Gap and the Seven Sisters. I have already photographed the snow-covered cliffs with the lighthouse at dawn the previous day. Skirting along the road below Belle Tout the first vehicle crawls past and up into the farm fields. Then a second vehicle, a station wagon, slides by with two figures hunched in the front, looking like two miniature versions of the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. They make it down to the end of the road and promptly turn around and head back to where they came from. No other cars are to be seen.
The sky starts to take on shape as I skirt by the car park at Birling Gap. A TV crew are braving the weather and stand huddled behind huge windbreaks they have erected. They are clutching flasks and steaming cups. I suspect they will not be venturing beyond the car park and the viewing platform. I trudge on and sense the crew eyeing me as I do so.
Having allowed the camera to acclimatise in the bag, I now set about the finger-numbing task of setting it all up. The metal of the tripod legs acts as a super speedy conductor and within minutes my fingers have no feeling. I proceed along the edge of the Downs taking images as I go. Having learned my lesson the previous day (snow and cold of this magnitude being unknown to me) I have doubled up on everything this time. Double gloves, double woolly hat and even a scarf – I am determined to stay warm. It seems to work with the exception of the unfortunate hand on tripod duty. And then the wind starts.
It whips across the snow, driving a mist of white ice particles over the fields and off the cliff edges in mesmerising smoke stacks and out over the grey Channel. The camera is out and working, though I do not venture right onto the edge as I normally would. Every now and then a light snow flurry adds to the atmosphere and discomfort as the cold always manages to slip through a fold in the scarf. Still it is magical – surrounded by all this white stuff!
My easy productive progress is abruptly halted as my right leg disappears up to the knee in a rabbit warren cunningly concealed by a layer of snow. It jars me from my tranquil thoughts. I proceed to stumble in and out of holes in a cartoon like fashion fit to feature in any Loony Tunes episode. Maybe the rabbits are telling me to stop playing that Rabbit Game on the Wii!
After what seemed to take ages, I clear the treacherous “Rabbit Valley” by carefully prodding the ground in front with my tripod before stepping out. I make a mental note to go around this area on my return. The snow is falling steadily now and I decide to start my return journey.
The return proceeds swiftly with a short stop to observe a fox off in a distant tree line and some ‘self portraits in the snow’. There is an abrupt change in the weather once I reach the Birling Gap car park. The sky turns several shades darker and starts to churn down snow that is driven along horizontally by a gusty wind. I decide to keep the camera out until I reach Beachy Head, as I think some pictures of the light house in driving snow will make a nice contrast to the tranquil scene the day before.
I get the images I am after and hurriedly pack away my gear, wrap the scarf tightly, leaning into the wind and set off. Visibility is down and more than once I stumble into a bank of snow, knee deep. I decide to roughly follow the outskirts of the road in the hope that the going is smoother. At least I don’t have knee deep snow here but the pub 100 metres away is only visible as a darker shape. My scarf and jacket are starting to accumulate ice.
I eventually stumble over the last hill that descends down into the town and magically just below the crest the wind dies away considerably. Below me, people are sledging, having snow ball fights and are building snowmen. Two very different worlds separated by a ridge on a hill. Cold and with a frozen scarf (it has almost taken on the malleable quality of a soft metal) I descend into town. Every now and then my arms windmill and my legs skid around as I shuffle onto a patch of ice.
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