Chalk and cobble and dove grey

Chalk and cobble and dove grey. 

Shock hems of white crests shush out of low mist. You sit on plastic mats on saturated ground to gaze at a view that comes and goes. And when it goes again, it takes the sounds with it. 

It's warm enough to take off coat and scarf, to roll up sleeves and to gaze out at the old path that now leads over the cliff edge and scurfed earth where the fence sways over that drop. You wonder how far out you used to walk on solid ground last year, before a Winter of erosion bit in.

When you set off to walk again, the ground is saturated with yesterday's rain topping it up to the brim, and you know the green's are brighter really, it's just this mist that drinks them back and the sky falling to fast in front of the sun. When you look back, the place you sat for lunch has been rubbed back into the sky. And evidence of you having been there is just a fading memory.

Four huge cliffs ahead, the old lighthouse seems to rise from grey blankets. It's islanded in a sea of mist, like some ancient tor calling to pilgrims. At the next dip in the cliffs, there's a drop of twenty metres to the beach where the mist finds a way into this little valley, as if it makes plans to join the sea in carving a way inland.

Crows scrape in the latticework of copse. And you hear the cursing of fishermen far below on invisible seas, hauling in their catch. And all you can think about is daylight ghosts and how someone might believe.