Yesterday it was so windy it was an effort to walk into the face of it, but we pushed on. We were on the edge of the ocean, a raised path between the fields and the heaving blue sea. The long grass, the green leaved crops, the yellowed fields all whipped in the wind, constantly moving, shushing and murmuring as they danced. A small poppy plant had wedged itself between the low sea wall and the path and it shook in the breeze.
There were tangled brambles, their berries still green, and white clouds of cow parsley mixed with the purple veined trumpets of mallow. Out to sea there was a cormorant hunched black on the top of a post. Seaweed had collected into thick soup in one corner of the bay, black and green and red and purple. A sand martin spun down in front of us, twisted, then disappeared back up. We watched a dark butterfly fighting the wind, lifted, pulled sideways, flapping its wings intently, half making its own path, half following the gusts of the wind.
The sea crashed onto the shingle then pulled back with a crackle of released stone. We passed two low lakes almost empty of water, dotted with black headed gulls, all resting in the hollow where the wind abated. The train tracks across the field were silent, empty, and the path had only a handful of dog walkers, a few whizzing cyclists. The wind had kept most away. We saw another butterfly, a peacock, dance across the air in front of us then settle, still, wings open, on the low wall beside the path. It opened and closed a few times, it’s orange spots watching us, until we shifted slightly and it flew up, off and away to another perch in a distant bramble bush.
Bonnie Radcliffe 