Beast From The East Goes West

Award-winning photographer David Chapman begins his new series exploring Cornwall’s Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty with a trip to a snowcapped Bodmin Moor

THE AREA

The Bodmin Moor AONB covers a huge area with St Neot in the south, Bowithick in the north; Blisland in the west and Upton Cross in the east.

THE PRACTICALITIES

Good places to park and walk from include: Minions with access to The Cheesewring, Rough Tor National Trust car park. Siblyback Lake and Golitha Falls. All have toilets and café except Rough Tor.

THE PHOTOGRAPHY

On Thursday, 31 January 2019, parts of Cornwall were hit by a deluge of snow. And though it had been forecast by the Met. The office hadn’t quite anticipated the severity of the event.

Sitting at home in West Cornwall I was also oblivious to the havoc being wreaked in other parts of the county. Looking out of our window all we saw was rain and lots of it. For a moment in the mid-afternoon, the rain turned slightly slushy in nature but it was never going to stick.

I turned on BBC Radio Cornwall to listen to the news to find that the A30 was blocked on Bodmin Moor. A perfect storm of events had led to the road being blocked by cars stuck in ice and snow. The roads had been gritted but since most of the county was suffering from heavy rain for most of the day all the grit had been washed away. Conditions changed quite suddenly and instead of heavy rain, there was a deluge of heavy snow.

The roads were cold and wet, the snow turned to ice and cars couldn’t cope with the hills, particularly on high ground. Around Jamaica Inn, the A30 became a car park and many people evacuated their vehicles on the main road and headed for the warmth and incredible hospitality of that famous hostelry.