I’ve got a couple of mates who are in the middle of a long-term art project called ‘The Edges of These Isles‘, where they’re looking at the differences in how an artist and a photographer capture the same location – and back in August 2014, me and James filmed them visiting Lindisfarne, and you can see that video here.

Well, we’re looking to produce a short film to tell the story of the whole of Tom and Simon’s project as they travel the UK, using some video stuff they’ve shot, along with footage that we’re able to get at certain points.

So we found out they were going to be travelling to Northern Ireland to visit the Causeway coast, so it was organised for me to go with them to film what they got up to! I had to travel really light, because the best flight Simon could find only had a really small bag size for hand luggage, with a weight allowance of 10kg, which would include both my clothes and all the kit I needed! Small items could be stuck in my pockets, but unfortunately I wouldn’t able to take any kind of camera support, or the Canon 70-200mm lens since it’s pretty heavy!

So last Friday, we arrived at Manchester Airport nice and early, only to discover the flight was delayed because of fog! We eventually left at 11.30am (two and a half hours later than planned) – and touched down in Belfast an hour later. It’s a pretty small airport, so we got through quite quickly, and then picked up hire car.

It was a bit drizzly as we started out, but thankfully it did start to brighten up as we headed north to the coast.

The first place we stopped at was Carrick-a-Rede. It’s a National Trust site, so there were quite a few people there. It has a rope-bridge that connects to a tiny island, so that’s quite a tourist attraction, but Simon and Tom chose to ignore that and focused more on other features of the coastline to sketch and photograph.

It was really sunny, but quite cold and windy, and even though there were paths, at times it was quite challenging terrain with some steep steps, and also quite tiring, especially when trying to film it all, since there’s a lot of running ahead, and moving to lots of different places to get a variety of shots.

We headed back to our start point, and then walked through Larrybane Quarry down to a narrow path by the sea, with a great view of nearby Sheep Island. The wind was really strong coming through the quarry (it was like a wind tunnel!), and I struggled to keep the camera steady! Hopefully I’ll be able to stabilise it in Premiere!

When we got back to the car park, we popped into the Weighbridge tea-room to try and warm up a bit, with a welcome hot chocolate and snack!

We then drove a few miles west to White Park Bay beach – an expanse of sand flanked by dunes, and there were no other people there – our only company was a herd of cows roaming about on the beach! We stayed there for a bit, but the wind was blowing up the sand quite a lot, and I was worried about it getting into the camera!

We wanted to be at the Giant’s Causeway ahead of sunset, but we also needed to check into our Airbnb in Portstewart, so even though it was tight time-wise, we drove the half hour journey to get our key, and then raced back to carry on.

We got to the Giant’s Causeway at about quarter past seven, and took the 20 minute walk down from from the carpark to all the hexagonal columns.

I was really surprised that there was no-one else there – when I was there last year with Andy Fidler, it was pretty busy, and it was a struggle to get photos without people in! But for some reason, it was quiet, so I was able to get some great shots of Tom and Simon doing their stuff, although it was pretty windy, and fun trying to get across the wet rocks without falling over!

With the light now fading, we walked back up the road (which seemed steeper than I remembered!) to the car, and then drove back to our Airbnb. It was now quite late, but we were all starving – we’d not really eaten much all day, so we went over to nearby Portrush, because we’d been recommended a restaurant there. We got a little bit lost trying to find it, but we eventually ate – I had a really nice steak, and then picked an amazing desert from a massive selection they had on display!

We got back a lot later than we’d hoped, because our alarms were set to go off really early, with the plan to leave the house just after 5am!

After what felt like no sleep whatsoever, we left whilst it was still dark and arrived at our location, which was some fields overlooking the sea near to Dunluce Castle.

We traipsed across the fields to the position ourselves for the sunrise which was about to break over the top of some distant cliffs. It was so windy, and Simon was struggling a bit trying to keep his lightweight tripod steady whilst trying to take long exposure shots! Once the sun had appeared, we moved back towards the edge that looks towards the castle, and at this point, all the weather happened! It was sunny, windy, rainy, then there was hail, and even a bit of snow!

We were all so cold – Tom was struggling to draw on his damp sketchbook, and was visibly shaking from the low temperatures! And Simon hadn’t packed a jumper, so only had a t-shirt on underneath his coat!

The light was beautiful, really golden, and because of the rain and snow, a full rainbow formed over the cliff with the castle and went all the way into the sea – it looked really cool.

I got some nice footage though, and was glad I’d got hold of a camera rain-jacket ahead of the trip, because I really needed it!

Cold and wet, we went back to the house to dry off (my jeans were soaked!), and also just have a quick lie down since we were all so knackered from the late night and early start!

We left just after 9am to drive over to Portrush, and found a really cool little cafe called ‘Bob and Berts‘. We had breakfast there, and it was really good! I had a waffle sandwich, which had sausage, bacon and egg served with maple syrup! Amazing!

After breakfast, we went to the main beach in Portrush, and I attached a GoPro to Tom’s head to try and get a POV shot of him sketching – not how successful it was though! We didn’t spend too long here though because out of no-where, it started hailing again, and it the hailstones were quite big! Luckily we were parked close-by, so managed to get out of it pretty quickly.

We weren’t sure what we’d be able to do if the weather didn’t improve, but thankfully it really cleared up and the sun came out. It was still cold, but at least it was dry!

This meant we were able to go back to Dunluce Castle, and Tom was able to properly settle down to do some sketching. One of the issues he’d had up to now was that because the weather was so challenging, we’d not really spent too long in one place, but here we were able to spend more time, and I was able to shoot a short interview with him whilst he was working.

The cliff first had a castle built on it in the 13th century, but I’m not sure how much of that remains as part of the ruins today. Apparently the castle was the inspiration for Cair Paravel in the Narnia books, which I think is pretty cool!

We left the castle around 1 o’clock and made our way back towards Belfast. On the way, we took a slight detour to stop at the Dark Hedges in Ballymoney. It’s a road with really old beech trees either side, that have grown into a natural tunnel, and have become a bit of a tourist attraction, because apparently they feature in ‘Game of Thrones’. A couple of the trees were damaged in the storms we had back in January, so you lose some of the effect, but it looked quite magical.

We got back to Manchester just before 8 o’clock, and we were so tired! I was glad that Simon’s wife Sarah picked us up from the airport, because we didn’t have to wait for taxis or anything, and when I got in I went straight to bed!