DECEMBER 2024 · ROAM
Fog on the border
Powys, Wales
Boxing Day. No traffic, no people. Presteigne's High Street existed only as far as the fog allowed.
I spent the morning walking the same route repeatedly. The town doesn't reveal itself differently on each pass — the buildings don't change position — but the fog shifts, or your eye finds different anchors. On the first pass: terracotta and rendered brick facades dissolving into white mist, chimneys silhouetted against it. On the second: the lime-green awning of a shop still dressed with a Christmas garland, the colour the most solid thing on the street.
The far end of the arcade: nothing.
Presteigne — December 2024
Presteigne is a medieval market town on the English-Welsh border. In clear weather the Georgian facades, the fluted pilasters, the ornate lamp standards would read as architectural history. In the fog they became flat planes of colour. Cream, ochre, pink, terracotta. The colour is what you navigated by. The structure behind it had gone.
The string lights and street lamps suspended along the Georgian arcade — I stood at the near end and pointed the camera down the length of it. The lights faded, one by one, into opaque white. The cream walls barely visible on either side. The far end of the arcade: nothing.
A single ornate wrought-iron street lamp in sharp focus, the festive garland still on it, the street behind it dissolved. The lamp is the whole image. Everything else is the fog.
The clock tower exists in one frame as a grey mass barely visible above the rooflines. Parked cars fill the foreground. That's Boxing Day in a small Welsh border town.
White terraced cottages bleaching into the mist. A Victorian street lamp marking an empty street. The lamp is still doing its job.
Terracotta and rendered brick houses fade into thick fog on Presteigne High Street, their chimneys silhouetted against white mist
Parked cars line a foggy High Street flanked by cream, pink and ochre Georgian buildings receding into mist
White rendered Georgian cottage with pitched roof and bare winter trees emerging from fog on a quiet street
Shopfront with lime-green awning and rose signage, wreathed in fog, evergreen garland adding seasonal detail
Bleached row of white terraced cottages dissolves into dense fog, Victorian street lamp marking an empty street
String lights and ornate street lamps suspended along a Georgian arcade fade into opaque fog, cream walls barely visible
Ornate wrought-iron street lamp with festive garland stands in sharp focus, fog dissolving the street behind
Lime-green and gold shopfronts with office signage and hanging baskets blur through dense fog on the High Street
Red brick terraces and white rendered cottages with ornate lamp merge into fog, rooflines and chimneys silhouetted against mist
Cream and terracotta Georgian buildings with fluted pilasters and street lamps recede into fog down Presteigne High Street
Clock tower barely visible through thick fog above a medieval market street lined with parked cars and Georgian facades