There was a flurry of activity as we made ready to leave base camp one and set the compass in a north-westerly direction towards the coast. The dry weather that had blessed us during our time in the Peak District had broken, a steady unending drizzle being tipped from the sky across the streets of Buxton. The forecast suggested this was merely a taster of what was to follow - a starter to a two day long main course of wind, rain and plummeting temperatures as an area of low pressure settled over Merseyside. And today we were headed for the legendary metropolitan borough, the Independent Peoples’ Republic of Liverpool, where Dave went to university more than thirty years earlier, making pilgrimages to Anfield as and when he could afford a ticket to see his beloved reds - which wasn’t that often as a penniless student. Crosby Beach and the famous Gormley statues were our target, the first of the big four subjects we had in our sights.
As we wiped dishes, emptied bins and hoovered the carpets of our home for the last few days in Buxton, we sought varying hacks that might keep our cameras dry on the beach later in the day. Lee, born and raised in one of the edgier quarters of Birmingham reverted to type and pilfered a solitary washing line peg and the bag he found it in. Dave busied himself with a bright orange plastic shopping bag, while I cut a hole in a bin liner and secured it to the lens with a rubber band. Happy that we were ready to face the elements, and that the lodgings we were about to leave were in sufficient good order to earn a positive review from the host (as long as they weren't counting their washing line pegs), we began the two hour drive, crawling through small towns in long queues of traffic as we approached the southern edges of Manchester’s huge urban sprawl. Finally we arrived on the first of four very damp motorways, where we were liberally sprayed in the wakes of huge lorries making their way north.
Around lunchtime, we arrived by the leisure centre at Crosby, where we sat in the car and watched the outside world very quickly vanish into a dreary blur through the windscreen once the wipers had stopped moving. After a while I decided it was now or never, and opened the boot, pulling on my waterproof trousers and wellies. Just three days earlier we’d been sitting outside a pub in Buxton in warm sunshine nursing cold beers - yet now it seemed as if a wintry steel had returned to possess the land, a fierce wind whipping away our good intentions and sending rain driving towards us from the north and west. This wasn’t going to be easy, but we were here now. We’d just have to get on with it and make the best of things. The bright yellow backpack cover on the camera bag in place, I was ready for action. Lee and I set off across the dunes and down onto the beach. Dave said he was still in the middle of his preparations.
If it had been Baltic behind the dunes, conditions were decidedly worse on the beach. The wind ripped at the waterproof cover on my camera bag as I stomped over wet sand towards the water, while the hood of my coat rattled about noisily as if it were trying to take off and carry me across the Irish Sea. When I arrived at my first subject, I set up the tripod and opened the pack to the tuneless notes of a rustling bin bag that began its bid for freedom almost immediately, pulling itself inside out and turning into a windsock on the end of my camera that threatened to wrestle itself away on the wind and add to the gazillions of tonnes of plastic in the oceans. Sir David Attenborough would not be impressed. Within about four seconds I gave up on the sorry assembly and stuffed it into a coat pocket. I always carry a shower cap in the bag, but there was no way that was going to stay in place for more than a nanosecond or two either.
By now, Lee was some distance away, and apart from him, I couldn’t really tell whether there was anyone else on the beach. I mean there were plenty of human figures around, but they were mostly standing like statues, some of them strangely green, facing stoically out to sea, battered and weathered by the seasons. Many stood tall and proud, while others were buried up to chest height in the wet sand. I grabbed the towel and the lens cloth, and the filters too, stuffing the lot into the remaining empty wet coat pockets. Well it’s about the long exposures here isn’t it? Just to make things even more entertaining, I’d chosen the telephoto lens before setting off, and the likelihood of swapping to a different one out here in the throes of this rainy sandstorm was precisely zero. As I put the camera on the tripod, the pouch of filters fell into the wet beach, along with the lens cap and cloth, the latter of which immediately disappeared, never to be seen again. With the exasperation chip firmly jammed in the red section of overdrive, I began to shoot, more in hope than expectation. It was only as I started to settle into a rhythm and finally enter the happy zone that I realised I was hungry. It was half past two, yet I’d eaten nothing since breakfast - and not being properly fuelled is one of the greatest schoolboy errors you make in this game. Especially when you’ve promised yourself an all day brekkie at Morrisons on the other side of the estuary as a reward for your efforts. It was time to return to the others and see how they’d got on.
Back at the car, two occupants peered out from behind steamed up windows. I had previously explained to them that breathing wasn’t permitted inside the car on wet days, but they clearly hadn’t listened. I peeled off the now useless waterproof trousers. At least the mountain trekking coat I’d invested in for last winter had kept me dry on the inside, even if it was sodden. Thankfully I’d thought to bring a second one along on the trip as backup. Dave, it seemed, had made only the briefest of forays over the dunes to the beach. He’d found one composition, taken one shot and returned to sit in the car and wait. Now why didn’t I think of that?
