OK, so it was raining yet again. The autumn shoots for the Brecon series have been plagued by water coming at us from all directions, and I really do mean all directions. Water is one thing, but as we head for winter rain is usually accompanied by gloomy weather, and so it was. There were a few sunny spells, but not many.
The best thing to do when it is raining is to take shelter. A cave will do nicely, except when you are perched on the edge of a subterranean river and the roof is dripping as if there were no rocks above you at all, just the heavy open sky. Waterproof covers for the cameras are a delight in these circumstances. They only just about keep the water out and the velcro on all the fastening tabs stick to your clothing. The atmosphere is wet and the air is blue with beautifully reverberant language, a fair bit of it in Welsh.
The last thing you want to film under such conditions is a spider that doesn’t like light.
OK…. that’s the end of the moaning I promise. It is only ‘tongue in cheek’ moaning, as these are the sort of conditions that I love. Everything getting covered in crap, hardly being able to hear a word each other is saying because of the running water, and so on.
The picture above shows why we were down in a cave system under the Brecon Beacons. There are several unusual species down there, and one is the cave spider. Just about every shoot as a wildlife cameraman brings a new species for me lately. This is the egg sac of one particular spider species. I didn’t manage to get a still of the adult spider as the led lights were about to end up in the river along with me. But what an impressive little structure.