THE DAY I LOST MY NERVE

On the tops of the cliffs at Burton Bradstock there are sheep fields with dry stone walls.

This morning I emailed a friend to say I was about to walk beside the Broadchurch cliffs near Burton Bradstock.

Quick fire he replied; he'd be frightened to go to the Broadchurch Cliffs but for someone living in Midsommer it would probably feel like a holiday.

Explanations.

The cliffs along the short stretch of Dorset Coast between Burton Bradstock and West Bay are integral to the plot of the television drama 'Broadchurch'. They loom over it. They set the atmosphere.

In the first series a boy's body is found beneath them. (Not a spoiler - the start of the story.) I'm not sure what happened in the second series because it was all a bit of a blur - so very much overloaded with events and surprises it's forgettable; all but the scenery. - the scenery can never be ignored. We're into the third and final series now. It's about rape. It's not cheerful TV. The music is drone. It never lets up. The action is slow. Little happens. But it's well plotted and well acted so each hour-long episode flies as fast as twenty minutes. (Come to think of it, there are three advert breaks in each so it probably is only twenty minutes.)

Midsommer Murders is a long-running detective series set in rural Oxfordshire. There are so many people murdered in every episode it's a standing joke there's anyone left to kill. For the residents of Midsommer, one dead boy is nothing. (They are different genres.)

That's all fiction.

What is not fiction is that these cliffs are terrifying.

They are so terrifying I didn't take any photos.

I didn't walk beside them.

I didn't walk beneath them.

I ran away.

The sea was magnificent.

The waves were enormous.

The roar was exciting.

There was a small crowd of people waiting for the tide to turn so there would be enough safe space between cliffs and water wide enough to pass through safely.

I was terrified. It wasn't just that the cliffs might crumble (which they might) . . . I couldn't stand the feeling of being loomed over. Nature-bloggers aren't supposed to scream inside and flee from their subject matter. But these cliffs are big and red and cracked and gold and they ripple like tall curtains from sky to beach.

I don't like them.
(Shame you can't see them!)

Fortunately, cliffs have grassy tops as well as pebbly bottoms so I walked along up high instead - where there were gulls and fulmars and larks and crows and sunshine and drizzle.

Of course these tops are the earth and rocks which would fall to the beach if the cliffs were to crack, so the choice was not between living and dying but between being crushed by hundreds of tons of rubble or being part of the rubble hurtling down. But light is good. And it's reassuring to imagine one might be able to leap fast enough to cross an unfolding chasm and run inland if necessary. (Through the sheep-field.)

I didn't walk far. When I reached the mouth of the River Bride, I turned back. Rain threatened. 

If I could have turned it into a sunny day for you, I would have.

The River Bride is a pretty little river - and pretty creepy too. Here, as it fights its way into the sea, it carves the most extraordinary shapes. (Its birth at Little Bredy, six miles inland, is the setting for the first Broadchurch rape.)

Dorset is a weird county. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth yet the fiction it inspires is cruel.

Take Thomas Hardy. He wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs.

Mayor of Casterbridge - a drunken man sells his wife to a stranger.

The Trumpet Major - a young woman is sexually harassed by the nephew of the local squire. 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - a young woman is raped, her baby dies, there are all sorts of complications, she eventually kills her 'seducer' and is executed.

Because I didn't walk below the cliffs I can only show you views from the top!

I had a nice walk though.

P.S. If this were a literary blog I would be wanting to know why there's a cheerful picture of someone hanging out washing on the front cover of Tess of the d'Ubervilles and how come Penguin can describe The Trumpet Major as 'Lyrical and lighthearted'.

The links between literature, landscape and sorrow can be pretty weird.
Humans are weird.
Wouldn't you say?

P.P.S. Readers who've never visited these cliffs may be disappointed there's no picture to show what it's like to look up at them. I just say they frighten me because they loom and might fall over. . . . So I suppose I'll have to go back soon and have another bash at being brave. Not brave for long, you understand. Just brave enough to aim my camera at their stark and dark and rippled faces - before running.

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BEING PROVED WRONG (and right) IN AN EXPENSIVE WAY

Red leaved plant on the tracks at the end of a platform at
London Waterloo Station

It's not often I have to get past an armed policeman and be challenged by a soldier for acting suspiciously in order to photograph a plant. Or rather - it's happened only once and that was on Thursday last week.

You may have noticed I've been a bit missing recently. And over the years you will almost inevitably have noticed there are certain things which pre-occupy me which don't often bother other people. And I encourage you to join in with some of them: with following the life of a tree for a year; standing still to see what one can see without moving; and looking for wild plants in towns.

I'm an enthusiast - and I've developed theories. For instance, as you, know - that wild plants are everywhere, even in the most unlikely places.

So this week, for my latest challenge, I set out to prove it in central London. I was absolutely convinced that while visitors are busy looking at things like the Lions in Trafalgar Square they miss plants growing by their feet.

You  might not think this matters. Maybe it doesn't. You're not going to come all the way from America or Spain to see a weed which you can see in a drain any old day at home. But in a way it does matter. It matters a lot because to miss these little scraps of determined life is like missing Narnia because it's at the back of a cupboard.

Ornithologists might say the same about birds (I don't know). An entomologist might say the same about insects. A micro-biologist might have a field day!

But my 'thing' by chance, pure chance, has turned out to be plants.

Looking up at Buddleia from below a railway bridge at
London Waterloo Station

I'm not even that interested in plants. (I'm definitely not interested in birds.) But we humans can't cope with the everythingness of everything and plants were the specific which sort of crept up on me. My grandmother used to take knitting with her everywhere. She was a diffident, shy person and knitting became her important and portable familiar. She churned out more twin-sets than she'd ever need or could be worn by her extended family. (You remember twin-sets? Short-sleeved jumpers in three or four ply wool (very thin) worn with matching cardigans.) I don't suppose she thought of her knitting in this way - but it meant she could sit silently without people ever thinking she was odd or unfriendly. And she could talk if she wanted because she knew the pattern by heart. 

Immediately outside Waterloo Station there's a road, partly covered,
where taxis draw up to collect people arriving in London by train.
On the other side is a long, long  row of rentable bicycles - an idea
introduced round the busy parts of London by the Mayor,
Boris Johnson.

Some interests make us more open to the world than others. I'd feel perfectly comfortable talking with a stranger who is knitting on a train but I'd never dream of approaching a birder searching the distance with binoculars and ask what they are looking for. Seeking out urban wild plants places me somewhere between the two. I can focus on sturdy and inspiring signs of life in unlikely places while being open to strangers who stop to ask what I'm looking at. I would never have met them otherwise. They often go away disappointed. People are always hoping for the exotic. But I don't think they think I'm mad. (Though perhaps a little boring!)

So . . . I went all the way to London to prove my theory - that wild plants grow everywhere.

London is three hours away on the train. Three hours there. Three hours back. On a freakily hot day. And trains are expensive.

All that way to find plants in Trafalgar Square - and there were none.

The very centre of Tourist London has gone mad on cleanliness. Ken Livingstone chucked the pigeons out of Trafalgar Square when he was Mayor - and now the lions shine and people sit happily on the steps and children chase each other round this big, safe area. It seemed sad at the time. Pigeons were part of the place. You could buy seeds to feed them with and they would come to sit on your arms and shoulders to eat. But they didn't 'arf make a mess! And instead of drifting away because they can no longer feed the birds - the square has filled up with holiday makers, and picnickers, and street performers and on the say I went there was a demonstration opposing the privatisation of visitor services at the National Gallery and the re-instatement of a union representative who's been sacked over the issue.

Daisies between Waterloo Station and the London Eye.
The curved building beyond the bridges is the London IMAX.

I don't know whether there were plants in Trafalgar Square when pigeons were there but neither are there now. Eventually I found a patch of short grass about an inch across at the edge of a drain in a kerb. That was all.

I looked up at the buildings around it that used to be dark with soot but which now sparkle in the sunlight, and I looked beside the benches. No plants. No litter. NO LITTER! How do they do it? They'd even emptied the water from the fountain and were cleaning that out too. Such exemplary house-keeping. And yes, the result is fantastic.

The result is fantastic but my theory totally demolished.

I was despondent.

But briefly.

You can't keep a good fanatic down.

Especially if that fanatic is me.

Up and down the side streets; getting hotter and hotter; thinking of that train fare; even the very expensive cup of coffee I'd bought for the sake of a sit-down and a break from the heat.

Back to Whitehall where government offices are centred.

Another of Ken Livingstone's legacies is to have reduced the volume of traffic in London. Of course there were buses and cars but the noise wasn't overwhelming. Thinking back on it, it was silent.

It wasn't. You don't get silent buses, even in London. It was the silence of concentration. And then of admiration.

A solitary plant grows on a wall against the Cabinet Office in Whitehall.
Above the railings at the end of the picture you can see the street name - Downing Street.
At the top left you can see the union flag (union jack?) flying on the top of parliament.
Seriously, how can you not but admire this plant?

When you see Downing Street (official residence and work-place of the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer) on the news you tend to see the door of Number 10. But Downing Street in itself isn't spectacular. It's a narrow cut between the huge, stone, sombre and impressive buildings of The Cabinet Office and The Foreign and Commonwealth Office. (Defence is down another street over the road.) And here, here at last, I found nature gone wild. There was a pile of leaves caught behind the Downing Street barrier and, wonder of wonders, a solitary plant on the wall of the Cabinet Office and another in the basement of the Foreign and Commonwealth one.

But how? How are they there when all else is swept away?

And do you know the Horse Guards in Whitehall? They wear bright red jackets and plumed helmets and sit silently on still horses under the shelter of sloped roofed boxes either side of a gate to a small yard and an arch under a building that opens out into Horse Guards Parade.

That evening the army would be marching up and down and being spectacular on this vast parade ground as they Beat the Retreat. (An odd celebration wouldn't you say?) And in two days time the Queen would be arriving along with hundreds of brightly clad soldiers and masses of horses would be Trooping the Colour - in part to celebrate her birthday even though it isn't her birthday. (Another odd tradition. We British - or maybe it's we English - revel in being odd.)

This is one of the two plants growing along the wall between
the Horse Guards on their Horses in Whitehall and Horse Guard's Parade Ground.

Well, in between the Horse Guards and the arch into this vast parade ground, were two plants against the wall. Again, how do they hang on there when everything else has been swept away? Especially when they both were about a foot tall.

But between the mounted Horse Guards and the entrance was a cluster of police with semi-automatic machine guns (carbines) clutched across their chests. And although they were letting everyone pass there was an extra policeman (with gun) between me and these two plants. So I asked if I could go behind him to take their portraits. 

I have strong legs. The rest of me is pretty feeble but my legs are strong. Blame it on the plants. I can crouch easily and steadily. I can even hop backwards in a crouched position. And I have no inhibitions about crawling up and down when there's a camera in front of my eyes. Imagine it. Soldiers on horses. Police with guns. A crowd of tourists admiring this famous London scene - and me crawling and crouching and hopping up and down all on my own along this guarded wall.

You know the kind of farce where one of the characters is crawling along the ground; say, looking for a dropped ring; when they come unexpectedly against the legs of authority? In my case it was a soldier in the kind of camouflage which might have worked in woodland if he stood still but which made him stand out disconcertingly clearly in a Whitehall Courtyard.

"What's she doing?" he asked the armed policeman.

"Photographing the wild flowers," he said in a voice which showed he thought this was a perfectly ordinary and sensible thing to do. Wonderful man!

I stood up.

"I came because you seemed to be acting suspiciously," said the soldier. (Possibly because he'd also noticed me over the road sticking my camera in and out between the railings beside the Ministry of Defence because there was a row of thistles there.)

"I looked for plants in Trafalgar Square," I explained. "But there were none, so I came here."

"It's because of the pigeons," he said.

I'd taken several pictures so I left. But without thanking the policeman for the way he'd accepted my request without hesitation. It's been preying on my mind since. (Police in this country are not always peaceful and polite.)

I doubt if he's reading this - but if it's you and you are - Thank you!

There's a post-script. I don't know who looks after the different parts of tourist London but the closer you get to Waterloo Station the street cleaning regime gets increasingly relaxed.

Here's a Pineapple May Weed mixed up in hairs and cigarette ends

 between Waterloo and the London Eye.

Wild London may find it hard to get a look in; but it does.

All photographs in this post were taken on June 11th 2015.

If you'd like to join me in admiring urban wild plants, there'll be a

Link Box for Street Plant Posts from 21st - 25th June.

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NOTHING LOOSE AND LITTLE LEAFY

Remember Oscar Wilde and Reading Jail ? Probably. The ballad too?

Do you know who the Governor was while he was there? Probably not!

Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, that's who. And if ever you visit the village church in Finchingfield (Essex) you'll find a plaque to his memory, praising him for founding the Borstal system.

The way teenage criminals are dealt with in England has swung around through history. At the beginning of the twentieth century, boys were put in ordinary prisons alongside older, harder men; men more experienced in crime. Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise decided this was inappropriate and set about reform and, in 1908, the first official 'Borstal' was established. (In the village of Borstal, hence the name.)

When I was growing up in the 1960s, going to a borstal didn't seem much of a big deal. It was a sort of Approved-School add on; as much a natural progression through life as prep-school to public school to university is for many children in wealthy families. Maybe this was a local attitude and demonstrates little more than the kind of area I grew up in. Maybe the boys who were sent there took it more seriously than I did (I didn't know what happened to criminal girls) but I don't think they saw it quite as 'prison' - not like the Young Offenders Institutions we have now.

AN ASIDE
This article on borstals points out that they were not necessarily humane places and says not to confuse them with 'approved schools' - which might more warrant the boarding school analogy. Certainly, I was surprised when I first saw the plaque in memory of Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise. To have invented Borstals didn't strike me at the time as something to be proud of. It's difficult, this. There are often contradictions between what is intended and what actually happens. (Just as Secondary Modern Schools weren't planned to be what they developed into.) Bravado has to be taken into account too. And, as time goes by, ideas change about what is harsh and what is helpful.

* * *

This morning, I spent a pleasant hour rifling through the find-a-camp-site page of ukcampsite.co.uk which tells you where you can pitch your tent or park your tourer in England and Scotland. This afternoon, when preparing this post, I came across Her Majesty's Prison Service  Find-a-Prison page. What a turn up!

I was looking for information on the Grove YOI (Young Offenders Institution) on Portland in Dorset.

Here's what it looks like across old quarry ground.

This is its page.

Between 1848 and 1921, it was a 'convict prison'. Then it was a borstal until 1988 when it was changed into a YOI. It now houses 483 young men between eighteen and twenty-one. (2010.) Borstals no longer exist. They were abolished during the changes brought in with the Criminal Justice Acts and their revisions in the 1980s.

Another prison service page explains

'Prison life for a young offender held in a Young Offenders Institution (or YOI) isn't that different to prison life for adult prisoners, however there are some differences in the way YOIs are run.'

Prisons are, of course, very different from what they were like in Oscar Wilde's time. None the less, I wonder what Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise would have made of this. His idea was that young people need something specially formulated for them. That doesn't seem unreasonable. Secondary schools are different from Universities and Universities are different from paid-work places. Different ages need different environments and levels of input.

I don't know what it is like to live in an institution like this; nor what it feels like for families when they come to visit. It is a long way from nearly everywhere and must seem very remote. It's on a semi-island, joined to the rest of the country by a nine mile long bank of pebbles and by the causeway (which I described in a previous post).

There are, of course, brilliant views from beside the prison  . . .

. . . but for a young man used to the bustle of city life, I imagine emptiness must come as a bit of a shock. The sea can be as bleak as it is beautiful. Families who make the trek to visit must sometimes wonder if their sons and brothers have been sent to the end of the world.

I have nothing to say here about what it's like inside the prison but I do know this is meant to be the beginning of a new life for the people locked inside it. The information on the find-a-prison page says it does not accept anyone whose sentence is longer than ten years. Ten years is a long time - some of the young men here may have committed pretty serious crimes. But whatever they have done (and some, I would guess, in the scale of criminality - not a lot) this will be their home for a while and . . . we are getting to the point . . . most readers of Loose and Leafy will have an idea that what grows around our homes profoundly affects what goes on in our lives.

This was the scene yesterday (May 27th 2011) when I walked along the prison wall.

As you will know from previous posts, I do not recognise the conventional distinction between weeds and the wild plants of the streets. Some young men are allowed 'out' to help in a community garden. Could they not have been asked to pull out these plants? To do a bit of light weeding? Clearly not. Someone has been the length of the wall (and this is only part of it) with poison. This is what you see when you arrive - a high wall and a great line of dead plants.

People arriving in prison vans won't have time to look up, except perhaps to glimpse the razor wire.

But those of us at liberty to stop, will see plants, not many of them, but plants, gripping into the crevices between the stones.

And the lichens and woodlice and clumps of leaves lower down.

Life is so encouraging.

So far, no-one has killed the plants along the more recently built bank which holds up a lawn nearer the prison gates.

Did they leave these bits of grass and barley because there is a poppy - or is the poppy on the list for next week's weedkiller?

This is not a post about how young people should be treated when they break the law. It is post that says what we see has an impact on how we are; that seeing dead vegetation is unlikely to be an inspiration to live a better life or to put your trust in the people who will be caring for you (guarding you!) over the months to come; that killing plants without need is . . . well, I think it is wrong.

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THE PLANTS IN THE WALL

I expect every town, every city, every village, maybe every street has a part that is breathtakingly wonderful but un-noticed and neglected.

It’s a grey day and these are grey walls. The ground is wet, the gutters are gungy and water is caught between stems in the wall.

Does anyone know what this plant is?
I suspect it's a garden escapee.
What do you think?
Three people have suggested
Pellitory-of-the-wall
(Parietaria judaica)
but I am unconvinced.

Stems?

What’s in a wall?

Here’s some green.

I don't know what this is either.

and a feather and sycamore seed caught on the Wall.

High on the wall, then . . .

safe and surprisingly dry, inside the wall - the chrysalis of a Large White butterfly.

This area is close to town but neglected.

Close by, there was to be a small public garden. It hasn’t worked. It’s where people came to drink and be drunk when the council banned out-door consumption of alcohol in the town centre. (Pub gardens and seating excepted.)

It’s a steep walk. People are likely to look down as they go up.

When they come down, the natural thing is to look at the view the - harbour, the bridge the buildings and masts, roofs, roads - and the hills beyond.

The walls loom. Plants make their home there.

HEDGES, WALLS, WEBS AND HUMANS IN BLEAK AND DRIZZLEY WEATHER

Clearly, the season is turning. Some days, everything is crisp and warm and breezy. Other days, it's grey and drizzly and cold and webs in the bushes become sinister. For most of the time, they are almost invisible. Come the rain and it turns out the place is covered in them.

It's raining. Webs are full of drips.
Leaves are limp.
Haws are red.
Alexanders seeds are black.
(Not because of the rain.
Black is their colour.)
I could have brightened the image,
made it look as if the sun was shining
- but then you wouldn't see what
this bundle 
of bushes is really like
on a dull, autumn afternoon
- messy, wet and muddley.
It's not pretty!

It's a mixture and a muddle. Leaves darken and drop, berries brighten. Much dies. Other plants pop back for a final fling. Some flower unseasonably. I'm always excited by these. The seasons sometimes feel relentless. They, and the whole of nature with them, plod along the groove and there's nothing we can do except live through what comes. When a primrose rebels against autumn and waves a flag for spring by flowering in September - I salute it! When it whithers I grieve more for it than for the rest of its family when it drew back earlier in the year. 


But there are other plants which grab their chance to re-surge and, like bad memories, do their very best to stay through winter. New Buddleia is already on a fight-back, springing out of drains and bursting out of walls. If previous years are anything to go by, ground elder will soon march up to join the newly growing nasties. There's a silly song 'Old judges never die, they don't even fade away.'. I think it's by Instant Sunshine - someone will know (? ? ?). Nettles are old judges in the hedge rows. They grow threadbare and lean a little but stay. New nettles grow up round them. Little barristers.

In the photo (above) of the web smothered hedges, you'll see a window in the upper right hand corner. Humans (as well as spiders) live round here. How else would the hedge be there? And where am I? I'm on an old railway line which is now a path for pedestrians and a cycleway. (I've taken against cyclists. Pensioners on racing tanks too. I think The Council should take the names of pedestrians going onto the path and check them off at the other end to make sure they've survived!) Back to the point. That window in the corner decided me to make this a wall post as much as a hedgerow one. An 'oh look humans are here after all' sort of essay instead of pretending we are the only two-footers on Earth as I usually do.

So . . . here is a 'not a hedge'.

 I drew attention to the vegetation in this wall in a previous post and wondered whether it might fall because of it. A while after, the buddleia was cut away but plants know where they like to live - Aspleniums find it an especially congenial home. This wall is north-facing and right on a dull, lots-of-traffic road. If I were a gardener and this were my garden, I'd welcome them. (Until the wall fell down!)

Buddleia too!

Lichen likes a stone wall and will be here all winter (for ever!?).

On the old railway line itself, in front of a platform (in effect, a the foot of a wall) - this.

And on the opposite platform . . . what it one day will be?

Here is some other new life.

Cheerful weather!
September 22nd 2010

Disgusting if you look close. Some caterpillars are nice. These are not. En masse, they are horrid. Their nest is about four inches long and strongly built. If you want to see them, you'd better click the picture.

And here's how the seasons are muddled in with each other. The same nest, a few days later.

Winter seems closer when it rains!

ROOTS AND WATER

This is a post about water. Water and roots. There used to be a railway line between Weymouth and Portland (this is in Dorset, England). The track was lifted long ago and the path it once followed is now used by pedestrians (lots of them). Some are walkers and tourists but, mostly, they are local people going to school, college, work, to the shops - on foot. One of the best bits is the tunnel. (Especially if you are in the company of young children because that gives you an excuse to hoot.)

. . .

.

Water drips from the roof - and it runs down the walls.

.

.

.

.

The minerals dissolved in it re-form as patterns

.

.

.

.

and stalactites.

There are trees on either side of the tunnel . . . trees and ivy.

. .

.

The stones of the buttresses at the entrance are pulling apart.

.

.

I put my phone into one of the cracks - roots. Roots like the water too.

.

.

.

.

It's fun going through the tunnel. It's fun to hoot and hear the echo. I avoid the drips. I worry about r o o t s .

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BLOOD AND BUDDLEIA

So, there I was, rammed up against a wild rose, with a thorn in my hand and a thorn in my coat and a thorn in my scarf and unable to break free - when a woman came by with a dog.

"Have you found something interesting?"

"I've found I'm stuck to this bush," I said, speaking over my shoulder.

I felt more explanation was needed. I mean, how did I come to get stuck to the bush?

"I was photographing this branch."

I nodded at the flailed branch on the catkin-ed tree, hoping to interest her in my monitoring project. Failed. I could see she was trying to see the point. I could see she was trying really hard. And I could see it wasn't working. She walked on.

My hand was full of blood. My phone was red with the stuff. And both were horribly sticky.

I wasn't even meant to be photographing that tree. I was meant to be photographing buddleia. I don't like buddleia. That's why I'd been putting it off.

"It'll be in shade by now," I reckoned - and I headed down to a beach where I could walk unembarrassed by my bloody hand (which wouldn't stop dripping) and the red, sodden tissues with which I was trying to stem the flood.

(Rose thorns hurt so much more than blackberry ones! Blackberries scratch but roses make deep, triangular gashes which hurt right inside the wound for days - in this case three.)

* * * * *

Another day . . . and back to Buddleia.

Cultivated buddleia may be alright. (Though I'm not sure even about that. I used to think it was lilac gone scraggy.) Wild buddleia, well, its leaves are dull and boring when grown and the flowers hang tatty too long.

There is only one place where I like buddleia - a stretch of broken bushes culminating in an exceptionally tall tree. (Barbee has already noticed!)

Buddleia doesn't seem to object to being flailed. Smashed down one minute - sprouting the next.

Two photos:-

One from the 5th December.

The other from the 17th January.

You can see the branch has been broken. You can see the bush hardly cares. Leaves were already sprouting robustly before the heavy frosts (which have knocked down the nettles and much of the ground elder). And after the frosts? Another burst of leaves! (You can see it in the bend of the branch.

The hedge is embedded with bits of branch. The ground is strewn with them. Grasp a branch still attached to the tree and ask it to help you balance - it falls off in your hand. But the plant lives on. (Incidentally, although I don't like Buddleia, I do like its trunks and woody bits; wonderfully varied in colour (depending on the weather) and fibrous and shapeful . . . ).

And here is another reason for not liking Buddleia.

It has its own campaign of destruction. The photo isn't good because it is north facing, in shadow, on a dull day. (I'll go back when the sun is shining and try to do better!)

But, I tell you, I wouldn't like to live in one of the houses which rest on this wall!

And I always feel a bit nervous when near it!

* * * * *

So. What about the beach? (The beach where I walked after being attacked by a rose.)

It's very beautiful but it's a graveyard for trees too.

Here, seen when the tide is out, are the gardens which fell off a cliff one night a few years ago. Householders woke one morning to find the ends of their gardens missing - lawns and greenhouses and horse chestnuts had been sheered off and were down on the beach below.

To the north of here, there is a huge coastal defence which protects a road. To the south, the mouth of The Fleet (a tidal lagoon) was relocated when a new bridge was built to link Weymouth with the Portland causeway.

When the sea wants to eat the land, it seems it can't be stopped. It has to bite at something. If you protect one bit of the shoreline, you are likely to put another at risk. Tidal dymanics are difficult to understand and knock-on effects hard to predict. None the less, it's a political issue. Should this stretch of coast and the land alongside it be protected at the expense of others? Poor old Council - responsible both for commissioning the flailing of trees and hedges on the land - and for deciding whether or not to let trees and houses and gardens fall off the edge of it!

_____

For the Post After This - Elderberry and Hawthorn