Bog Myrtle & Peat

Down to the shore in a westering sun, and what a weight of birds awaited. Curlews stood in every creek and glistening vein of the shore; oystercatchers and godwits and pintail in the marshes where the samphire glowed almost coral pink. It’s some place, this – wild and far-flung in the horns of an old bay where the tide creeps and slides around the rocks and the shore’s a bursting bank of ancient oak and birch. Turn right around yourself and see no sign of humanity; nothing to suggest that man has ever been. This is the coast where vikings came, and I see what they saw as if their sails were shipped on Tuesday last week.

And mallard among them, and a black smirr of newly come wigeon above the battling tide. And when I felt fit to burst, I looked up and found a galaxy of plover in the hanging sky. Golden plover, winking sad like beech leaves in formation with the hills of home beyond them.