With good weather forecast for Boxing day and a high tide at Seaford around lunchtime, I decided to head for Cuckmere Haven or the Seven Sisters for a walk and photography outing after so many weeks of wet weather.
I also needed a good afternoon out to help clear my head after a traumatic week or so. I had originally thought that i would probably park at South Barn, Seaford and take my well worn walk to Hope Gap or maybe down to beach level near the coastguard cottages at Cuckmere Haven.
However, I should have expected the full car park that greeted me there due to the decent weather and the popularity of the area for post Christmas walks.
Changing my original plan, I headed off to the car park at the Seven Sisters Country Park Visitor Centre at nearby Exceat and parked relatively easily, with the £4 for the remainder of the day being a fairly reasonable fee especially given the excellent facilities available there.
I chose to walk along the road to get to the West side of the river and to then walk along the footpath from there to the beach for photos. Once onto the footpath, I came to a point where I had the choice of 3 paths to take. One headed straight on but strayed away from being close to the river, one headed to the right and further away from the river and up hill (which didn't appeal anyway), so I chose the left turn to remain closer to the river. This proved to be the wrong choice, as it turned out to be the muddiest footpath I could possibly have chosen but I did manage to reach the beach without ever losing my balance or getting too dirty. Choosing later to return via a different route showed me the error of my earlier choice, as I returned via what it transpired would have been my best original bet - the straight on path of the 3 options I had faced.
Once at the beach, I assessed my options for a photographic viewpoint and initially opted for a view out to sea that would capture the waves breaking onto the beach set against a glow of clouds that were backlit by the sun and had the sun ray poking through in various spots.
After a while, the sun broke through a little bit more and lit up the end of the Seven Sisters cliffs while also highlighting the white water created by the breaking waves - this scene below was 90degrees to my left from my original viewpoint.
The sun peeking through was a temporary glimmer and soon it was back to looking out to sea and shooting backlit clouds and reflections of sunlight in the breaking waves which were smoothed out by the use of variable ND filter and therefore longer exposure on tripod mounted camera.
After that, it was the walk back to the car and a much better footpath having chosen a different route which turned out to be a great choice.
Not the afternoon I had originally planned, but I am learning to adapt to whatever is in front of me and try to be creative and to make interesting photos.
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