From This…To This

I was at Coombestone Tor on Saturday running a 1 day workshop with Truro Camera Club. I headed across the grassland to a favoured old Hawthorn to find that it was decimated. I went looking for the snapped branches, thinking this sad event must have been caused by winter storms, but the more I looked into it, the more convinced I became that the branches have all been snapped off.

The tree has been like this for as long as I have been photograping the moors. OK, it was a skeleton from the start, dying quite a few years ago, but after testing a few branches to see how much load I could put on them before cracking or snapping made me conclude it was descimated for firewood or similar.  

Of all the trees on the moors to appreciate and photogrph, this one was a beauty. What a crying shame.