Winter. December, 2017
Hope Gap, East Sussex
Each step falls with a firm, crisp crunch. Intricate patterns, formed by ground-frosted scrub are shattered under foot. Lining the path, stripped of leaf and colour, brown banks of bramble, piled like discarded fishing nets. Blue tits, robins and stonechats flit between path and shrub, foraging for the last of the autumn berries. The low winter sun is held above the horizon by the branches of a hawthorn tree.
A pair of wild rabbits hop lazily across the path. They shake the delicate stalks of wild flowers, causing the dried seed heads to bob and bend. Glimpsed through a gap in the trees and shrubs that tumble down to the sea, a thin line of white chalk.
With no wind to carry the sound or smell of the ocean
A silence, broken only by the call and chirp of the birds
Lies over the frosted downland.
At the base of a shallow dip between the cliffs, a set of concrete steps lead down to the beach. It is low tide in the Gap. The smell of the sea greets you before sight or sound of the waves. In the calm of a tide yet to turn, the sea relies on broken markers to remind you of its power.
Fallen sea defences,
Defeated arcs of concrete and steel,
Dot the beach below.
A steel gabion lies smashed open, spilling it’s cargo of rocks onto the sand. At the cliff top, a rusted steel bar emerges from the chalk. It droops, supporting nothing but the wind. Spreading across the beach the grey, hard sponge of gault clay, full of finger marks and holes. Underfoot, the ground crunches and cracks as you walk through the tidal pools filled by thousands of empty shells. Furrows, periwinkles, mussels, limpets and cockles picked clean by tide and bird. Black lines of tooth wrack seaweed race along the rocky foreshore, waiting for the return of the sea.
At the waters edge stands a grey heron. It watches cautiously before unfolding long limb and wing to wobble into flight, skimming along the shore.
The tide is beginning to turn
The neat folds of water give way
To short waves, biting at the beach.
At the foot of the cliff the sand is littered with the huge chunks and boulders of cliff falls. They lie on the shore like parts of a broken chalk giant.
Here lies its great fist, thrust into the ground.
Here lies a giant finger and toe
Here lies it’s great head, chin thrust accusingly skyward
Looking to see who toppled it from cliff’s edge.
To the east, rolled out in fresh white chalk the Seven Sisters cliffs. At the head, Belle Tout lighthouse stands, an exclamation mark measuring its own height above the waves. The moon is rising above the low red clouds as they brush and skim along the crests of the waves.