It’s that period of not quite winter and not quite spring; still cold, but tickles of warmth in the air, days getting perceptibly longer, enough to make you think that the worst is over for another year. No-one has told the rain yet, though. Another day, more rain, clouds straining and appearing to sink into the earth under the water’s weight. Rain that falls dead straight, in long lines that appear like the bars of a prison.
Even when the rain stops, the water is omnipresent: overflowing water butts in the garden, mini-streams flowing down the trunks of sodden trees, gurgles from the grass as water drains into the lawn and seeps along hidden pathways in the soil.
Then an out-of-nowhere sun. Where did that come from? The clouds part to reveal a bleach of brilliant blue sky, the brightness placing a sudden spotlight on the house and garden. Hidden secrets, such as the moss that clings unobtrusively to the roof, are revealed in new light, alien-like blobs of glittering green bodies and reddish antennae.
Time to head out and head to the sea, along a road that is lit up by flame-like slicks where the sunlight hits the sodden tarmac. It’s not the only strange juxtaposition of water and fire that this winter of rain has caused: there are hedgerows so blackened by the rain they appear to have been burned; likewise, the singed scars of muddy paths across open fields in the place of the faint lines that guide you in drier times.
The seafront bears the scars of the last few weeks’ weather: unruly piles of pebbles blown or swept from the beach line the path, the sea itself a filthy churn of blackened water, seaweed rolled over and over by the waves.
When we arrive those waves have a fearsome crash and roar, their foam a stop-motion video of settling and melting snow, their spray coating us in a salty embrace. As we walk, something approaching calm descends: we can walk head up into the wind, instead of faces down, buried into our jackets; the seagulls leave the calm of the wetlands across the road to head back to sea.
With the calm comes a rhythm – tumult replaced by a steady fold and fall, whoom and heesh, of the waves as they reach shore. And a beauty – the water creating endless patterns of twisting helixes as it moves over and around an underwater platform.
The last gasps of sunlight add their own effect: glitter as the water splashes, a gentle glow on distant chalky cliffs, and a flock of seagulls captured in the light as they hover above the sea, bodies lit up so that they appear like Chinese lanterns drifting delicately in the wind.
Another day, more sea, more waves. This time at Portland Bill, with nothing beyond, just the open Channel and eventually France. Portland is a constant presence on my walks in this part of Dorset: a distant dark shadow raised on imposing cliffs, a reassuring and eternal backdrop to photos from our many years here. Up close, its beauty is rawer and offbeat: those cliffs give us long views both east and west along the Dorset coast, low-slung Chesil Beach in one direction, high-rise Jurassic cliffs in the other, but there’s also a pervasive sense of desolation and end-of-the-wheel feel about the place.
The shoreline has no protection from the beat of the waves, and even with a calmer wind today, there’s enough of a swell to drive the water against the rocks and create tall fountains that tumble onto the ledges and ruins of quarried stone. More movie analogies – today it’s like watching a black and white film, the grey of the sky, sea and rocks only broken by the white froth of the waves. We climb and scramble far enough from the cliff edge to avoid being caught by the spray, occasionally venturing closer, daring the water to soak us and keen to get a rawer sense of the power below us.
Amidst the tumult, a lone fisherman stands at the edge, impervious to the sea’s roar and splashes. He casts his line again and again, patiently waiting for something to bite, although its difficult to believe that there would be anything brave – or foolhardy – enough to swim close enough to that shore. And yet, he is eventually rewarded by a good-sized seabass – not that he’s greatly impressed. He mutters, “I was hoping for double the size”, when I congratulate him on his catch.
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