It's 7:20 on Tuesday 5th December and we set off with an ultimate destination of Camborne in Cornwall. We are booked into the Premier Inn where two nights are costing £91 and given my miniscule shareholding in Whitbread this includes breakfast and works out at £22.75 per person per night for bed and breakfast, a bargain by any measure.
A minor lack of forward planning means that we get to Exeter before stopping for a Greggs breakfast, we then set of with a view to driving over Dartmoor to Tavistock with a few stops in between.
First stop is Haytor but Mrs. Manley doesn't want to get out here but at least she takes over driving duties. A little further on, and possibly peaking rather early, we encounter the highlight of the visit, two large stags jump the wall and cross the road just in front of us. I took a couple of snaps through the windscreen but didn't have a telephoto lens fitted so the quality wasn't amazing. I jumped out to grab my camera body with telephoto lens attached but the stags were moving away and I only managed to grab a couple of shots on my i-phone. The image included here was taken through the car windscreen and tightly cropped.
Moving on Mrs. Manley spots something of interest in a field ahead of us; "it's a rock" I tell her but when the rock takes off it transpires that it is one of three large birds of prey, probably buzzards. They were gone before I could catch them on camera.
Next stop was Dartmeet. The East Dart river was in full flow and I took some very pleasing (at least they are to me) images of the water with a slow shutter speed leaving the water nicely blurred (or as Dave Duggan from Banbury Camera Club would say, "looking like cotton wool", one of his pet hates!).
Next stop was at my favourite Dartmoor location, The Windy Post. This involves a walk of about 15 minutes from the nearest car park but is well worth it. I took several images before Mrs. Manley decided it was time to move on. One image with the cross in the foreground in portrait format seemed to be much improved when Instagram cropped it into landscape although I will need to Photoshop my camera bag from the background if is to become a competition entry! It is in the Devon Gallery. I also captured a couple of nice images of Dartmoor Ponies on the way back to the car.
Moving on to Tavistock we found free on-street parking for an hour and set off to have a look around. I particularly like the Pannier Market where a local photographer has a stall. For some reason I invest in an Australian style wax hat and I also feel inclined to support local business by purchasing a slice of mince pie flavoured flapjack. Mrs. Manley, meanwhile, is collecting ornamental fish. Whilst browsing through the photographs for sale in the market I came across an image of the church at Brentor which reminded me that it was actually on our itinerary so we set off for it. We climb to the top and take a look inside, my best image is taken at the foot of the steps up to the church; it is in the Devon Gallery.
We set off for Camborne but Mrs. Manley is hungry. Just by chance our route takes us past Bolventor so we stop at the Jamaica Inn for lunch / dinner. Checking in on Facebook I notice that it has been set up as Jamica Inn, I wonder how long that typo has been there?
We get stuck in monumental traffic jam on the A30 and finally arrive at Camboune at about 6pm. It's a good job we didn't arrive any earlier as they've only just been reconnected following a "massive" power cut. A couple of drinks in the Trevithick Inn and that's it for day1.
The 8:30 breakfast is not impressive; nowhere near hot enough. We set off for Penzance but make a slight detour to Marazion to capture some images of St. Michael's Mount. The photographer in Mrs. Manley comes to the fore as she insists that we need to turn round to photograph the mount from a different angle as she has "missed the light". She was of course correct and we got some nice almost silhouette type images which Mrs. Manley had loaded onto Instagram "in the blink of an eye".
We then parked up in the short-stay car park, £1.60 an hour for cash or, for some reason, £2.00 if paying by Just Park including 20p for some form of insurance; needless to say I paid by cash. We had a wander along the beach and around the village, collecting a few more ornamental fish before moving on to Penzance and parking up near the harbour. We had a wander around the town and checked out most of the charity shops for fish ornaments and I picked up a copy of A World History of Photography from the British Heart Foundation shop for the princely sum of £7.
Next stop is the "not to be missed" Botallack. Unfortunately the weather is quite calm so there are no massive waves to see but it's always worth a visit. Mrs. Manley is now hungry so I give the option of the Gurnard's Head (very expensive) or The Tinner's Arms (quite expensive), both theoretically in Zennor although the Gurnard's Head is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Probably for no other reason that we get to it first we go for the Gurnard's Head, fortunately for me it was Mrs. Manley's turn to pay! We move on along the coast to St. Ives, a place that I would normally avoid but it is quiet on a dull Wednesday in December. We park up and have a walk around taking a few images. It begins to rain so we make our way back to the car and return to Camborne for a couple of drinks in the Trevithick.
An earlier breakfast the next day (we have a 11am appointment in Taunton) is of a much better quality and we leave Camborne at about 8am. It rains all the way home but had hardly rained over the course of the 2 days whilst we weren't driving. A good couple of days.




.