Kilve at Christmas

Kilve, Boxing Day 2011

Another landscape that I've struggled with for a number of years. Just to prove that I'm versatile, its a coastal landscape this time, although we're still in Somerset, at Kilve. The beach there boasts exposed rock strata not dissimilar to those found on the more famous Jurassic Coast.

Over many years, we've fallen into a Boxing Day routine, verging on becoming a tradition. Desperate to get out of the house, in the afternoon we drive down the coast, park by the tea rooms and walk along to the beach.

There, its always cold, usually raining and generally a bit bleak. I fiddle with my camera, everyone else gets bored and fed up, so we walk back the car and drive home in time to continue the sedentary pursuits and overeating that we'd ventured out to get away from.

Boxing Day 2011 was no different. Myself, my wife, son and father drove down there and behaved much as described above. Unlike previous years, when we'd taken the coastal path, we decided to make our way down the beach. This was a foolish undertaking, given that the "beach" is strewn with large boulders and we were trying to negotiate them with a four year old and an octogenarian in tow.

So we gave up as it started to rain, but not before I made the image above, which is the only halfway decent shot that I've ever taken of the place in our many years of going there. If you use your imagination, you can see the above mentioned rock strata in the foreground.

On the way back up the beach - which took a while - I made this image of my father, which now seems significant and prophetic. 

At the time though, he was just getting a bit fed up with the three of us prating about risking broken limbs on a public holiday and decided to set off back to car as soon as he saw us returning.

I suspect that our Boxing Day tradition may fall by the wayside -  for a year or two at least.