Goodnight friends! First day in the south west, a little visit to Charmouth. Pretty blustery and dreary, especially in the morning and early afternoon, with a sharp sour salt wind from the sea dropping the 14°c or so temperature down to feeling more like 8°. Spectacular haze rolling across the crowns of the headlands, flinty pebbles smoothed and warped into flowing candlewax forms. A new landscape of flora and fauna, green-flowering stems of sea beet and blistered, waxy dark leaves of bristly oxtongue shuddered under the gusts, what seemed like a sand martin performing incredible twisting, diving maneuvers skimming just above the river Char.
A small day out today, my joints protesting and a heavy, painful lethargy hanging over me in the wake of overnight rain. A small trip to a fossil museum and a short walk along the beach left me exhausted but satisfied with the day’s novelties and adventures.
May we find mutual comfort and support today!
Image ID: Photo of an arc of brown sandy beach on an overcast day, a damp, streaky grey sky above, rushing foam of a grey sea below, a gull banking close to the camera at a steep diagonal, and distant headlands emerging from a haze of mist and spume.
A closer-up photo of the same headland, a few windblown walkers and beachcombers dwarfed by the incoming grey-white tide and receding layers of towering dark mud cliffsides fading into the mist and topped with yellowing grass.
Photo of soft white light filtering through faintly green glowing layers of the mingling canopies of a fig and a maple tree, very large, round-lobed leaves to the bottom and left of the frame and tiny, star-like pointed leaves to the upper right.
Photo of a large gull standing in almost perfectly profile, body mirrored in the distorted blue shine of a car roof, storm-grey wings, sleek white neck and head with a pale round eye and ferocious yellow bill, a scarlet stripe near the clip-point tip of the lower mandible.
