Vanishing fog

As new findings suggest fog may be disappearing from our world, Fergus Collins meets fog chaser Laura Pashby who treasures its power to transform landscapes - and ourselves

- Fergus Collins

A childhood memory of fog haunts me. I was six or seven and, with my two bigger sisters, had climbed the hill from our village and walked over the fields to Wyatt's Farm in Somerset to buy fresh corn-on-the-cob.

It was a late summer's day and if I'd been more knowledgeable, I might have worried that the edges of the world were already hazy. By the time we were making the return trip, a thick fog had descended, the horizon vanished and we could only see a short way ahead.

I still remember the seemingly endless panicky search for familiar stiles and gates in a wraith world.

I'm not alone in thinking of fog as a frightening presence. Folklore, books and films regularly depict fog as a lurking menace. It limits vision, dims perception and hides the actions and motives of ne'er-do-wells. The Brenin Llwyd the Grey King - of Welsh legend is a baleful mountain spirit that emerges in the mist to prey on travellers and children. In the most famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, fog is a central character, a creeping blanket of fear over Dartmoor that thwarts even the great detective. Back in the real world, as any motorist knows, fog can be truly dangerous when you're out on the road, especially at night.

So, for many of us, fog is an unsettling phenomenon. But not for all, as I found recently, when I made a podcast with photographer and author Laura Pashby. In her new book, Chasing Fog, Laura experiences connection, beauty and a deep sense of self within fog and its even more ethereal twin, mist. I planned a walk with Laura at Uley Bury, an Iron-Age hillfort high on the Cotswold escarpment in Gloucestershire.

On the day we meet, frustratingly it's gloriously sunny after a week of fog.