"Home is..." First day in Wales, location scouting

With a 5-day block to shoot some pictures in Wales whilst visiting relatives, we set off with every intention of arriving late on Wednesday, then doing a shoot on Thursday.  And typically, our arrival in Wales has coincided with some of the worst weather of the last two months.

This shot, from the Cob embankment in Porthmadog, sums up the scene pretty well; in the distance is the planned location for the first shots, being somewhat smothered with rain varying from drizzle to torrential.  The sky is what our friend Clare referred to as a Tupperware Sky, as if you’re sat in a box looking up at a flat white lid.

Given the conditions today, we scrubbed doing an actual shoo this morning, and decided to do a bit of a recce on some of the planned locations.  First stop, Cwm Prysor, on the Trawsfynned-Bala road, and an abandoned railway viaduct I had visited some years ago for a photo shoot.  And to our extreme annoyance, the site is now under CCTV surveillance.  Though there is a permissive footpath, the idea of having to explain to people why we’re lugging a lot of furniture along there at 6 in the morning doesn’t appeal at the moment, so the location has been dropped for the time being.

We found this rather nice spot, on an abandoned freight railway- nice public point of access (a level crossing), and no chance of being splatted by a train, being as nothing has passed this way in over a decade.  However, parking may scupper this spot, but it’s worth bearing in mind.

By this point the weather was seriously deteriorating, along with visibility, as we approached Blanuae Ffestiniog (though for all my life I don’t think I’ve ever visited this town in nice weather).  Two more old photography locations from Uni days, and two more rendered unsuitable by the intervening years… a new road has sealed off access to one spot, and quarrying operations have started again at another.  Attempts to find a new spot were then thwarted by the gale force winds and heavy rain, so we left.

A stop further down the valley at another old location, Tanygrisau, proved somewhat more positive, and gave us a couple of decent spots to come back to.  We finally ended up trying to find an old slate mill I’d once passed years ago between Prenteg and CymStradlyn, but got somewhat lost on a single track road which seemed to have left civilisation behind.  When we got to this point, and the livestock that had decided to block our path, we took the hint and decided to head for home.  By this point the torrential rain had properly set in, and we decided to scrub the shoot altogether until tomorrow morning.  On the positive side, tomorrow is meant to be much better weather, and whilst we’ve written-off a few locations which had the potential to be suitable, we’ve found some others to substitute.  Next up, all being well, a trip to the beach for the first shoot.