Porthilly Cove

Damp brown beech leaves on the grass at home announce the arrival of autumn in Cornwall; the nights begin to close in. From Porthilly beach you can see two popular summer resorts - Padsstow sits to the left across the water while fashionable Rock is just to the right. But today Porthilly beach itself has a sodden, unloved feel about it, and the silvery autumn sun sometimes breaks through the clouds only to suck the colours out of the landscape...

Pentireglaze Haven (east cove)

Nearby, the fashionable Polzeath beach is crowded with surfers today. But walk eastwards along the coast path and you soon come to the two coves of Pentireglaze Haven, strangely quiet and deserted. This is the smaller, unnamed, of the two. The approaches from Polzeath on the cliff-tops give stunning views of this whole stretch of coastline, the strong onshore wind scattering white messy surf all over Hayle Bay. But the breeze is still warm for this time of year and you can just sit for hours on the rocks or the grassy banks, watching the shifting sunlight playing on the waves.

Portloe (East Cove)

You can easily miss this this little beach, as I often have before today. But such a waste! Walk along an inconspicuous footpath east of the harbour and soon you can clamber down some stone steps to reach this cove in a lovely private setting. In contrast to Portloe's harbour cove, I could easily linger here till the rising tide forces me back up...

Portloe: postscript

Here is an example of how light, weather, time of day, personal inclinations and other circumstances all shape the published image, here is one I 'snapped' today, so diffeent from yesterday, as an afterthought...

Portloe

Portloe is a tiny shingly cove that provides a small drying harbour of sorts for local fishing boats. Strong with the smell of the sea, it is usually cluttered with small craft and piles of fish trays and lobster pots. Not a beach for lingering on, but you can walk along the rocky cliffs overlooking the cove on either side. It is easy to find places to sit and enjoy the ridiculous blue that is splashed over all this seascape in the strange September weather that persists, despite today's blustery winds...

Porthleven Sands

Last week's indian summer seems finally to have ended. With today's clouds and the shifting light, walking along this long stretch of sandy beach brings you stunning views and colours each minute. What few walkers you meet soon disappear around some rocks and the whole place feels deserted again. In the distance, the Lizard marks England's southernmost point where, sailing west, you begin really to feel the open sea turn into the Atlantic

Watergate Bay (Revisited)

Watergate was the very first beach of this project, and the only one I have revisited. After a summer of foreign coasts and a series of small rocky coves, I make no apology for this repetition; it is a great joy to walk along the gentle water's edge of this beach again, its tall cliffs still shrouded in last night's mists and its sand seeming to stretch out miles into the haze...