The octagonal ‘Temple of the Winds’ at Bude, North Cornwall, modelled on the ‘Tower of the Winds’ in Athens, was built by Bude’s famous Acland Family in 1840 and moved to the present location in 1880. The headland is now known as ‘Compass Point’ after the markings of the cardinal and ordinal directions on its exterior walls. It provides a good source of foreground interest in any shot up the coast from here, though the light and drama is rarely as good as in this shot. At low tide an unbroken beach leads all the way up to the sunlit headland; behind it, and greatly foreshortened in this scene, the radar dishes of GCHQ Bude, built on the former WWII airfield of RAF Cleave, lie nearly 8km up the coast. A big Atlantic winter storm was hitting the coast, and it was this that I had gone out to photograph at dawn; I was not aware until I got there that snow had fallen in the night, and was fortunate to get the sun coming through to light it, and the radar dishes, during an all too brief break in the clouds.
