Concentrate on CONWY

“What on earth are you doing getting up at this time of the morning?” Sarah muttered from underneath the duvet.

“Think yourself lucky it’s September,” I said. “If it was June I would be getting up two hours earlier. Anyway, we chose a fixed bed layout so I could get up without disturbing you, so go back to sleep.”

So began another holiday for a landscape photographer keen to make the most of the early morning light, this time around Conwy. The night before I had worked out my alarm time. Sunrise was at 6.46am. Allowing half-an-hour for breakfast and a cup of tea and another half-hour to walk up that big hill, that made it a 5.45am start.

I needn’t have bothered. It was a promising forecast, but a bank of cloud masked the sun’s rays as I reached my vantage point at the top of Marl Hall Woods and it took a full hour for the sun to get above the cloud and shine on Conwy, Llandudno Junction and the not-so-distant mountains of Snowdonia. I was a bit dismayed by the lack of light.

A sparrowhawk did its best to cheer me up as it glided across the woodland and a buzzard mewed loudly as it emerged from the trees over my head. But as soon as the sun glistened