I don’t tend to share many throwbacks on Instagram, but this one was an exception – and it’s also encouraged me to dig back into the archives from the last few years and revisit (and share) some older photos with a fresh edit. This was John Muir Country Park on March 8 2020, and I hadn’t shared this photo at the time as the highlights were so fierce. It was one of those photos you take in the moment, and the light isn’t right, but you can’t resist capturing it anyway.
And then I re-edited it and shared it, and it became my most liked photo of recent months, and then it was re-shared on Instagram by Visit Scotland within a post dedicated to beautiful woodland walks.
So why share this here? Because this photo is such a good memory of this place as it once looked. Quite a few of those trees on the right are no longer standing and, of course, the whole character of this place has changed because to walk here now, to this point overlooking Hedderwick Sands, you must first pass the destruction of Hedderwick Plantation.
And this walk on that March Sunday back in 2020 when, let’s face it, the world was also a different place, was a beautiful one. The light was constantly shifting as we walked along the edge of the woods towards the bay. Looking out over Hedderwick Sands in one direction, the sun was glowing, while in the other a bank of low cloud was approaching and it was suddenly really windy. Is it going to rain…? I wondered, and then, within seconds, it was pouring. See that speckled effect on the right side of this photo? That’s the rain. Beautiful sunshine glowing through the mist and wind and rain, all at once. I stood on the very edge of the woods, the rain whipping on my face, with this dazzling light, and it felt good.
I love these moments of shifting weather and light.
John Muir Country Park, March 2020
