A month of wind and snow. I head out into a dark white afternoon, unsure which direction to take. The wind is fierce and unrelenting, I lean into it as I take the lane towards the Eastern valley. The hedgerows, quivering and bent beneath the winds, are beginning to reveal their colours. Like the first strokes of a painting, dabs of blue violets peep out from under the hart’s tongue ferns and the frayed brambles. The air is wet and my hood is filled with salt spray whipped up from the waves that I can hear long before I see them. I decide to stay high, walking along the top of the valley, enjoying the precipitous feeling. Below me the river crashes under ruined mill buildings. It is triumphant in its speed and power, unfazed by the winds which roar up here. Down there, between the steep brackened slopes, the river remains queen of all.

In the spring there will be yellow flag irises where the fresh water meets the sea and a forgotten granite fringed field that hides for most of the year in plain sight, clinging to one side of the valley, will be revealed by bluebells for a few short weeks, a perfect square of blue. But now, the valley is dark, glistening wet and distant. And along its top edge my body rattles in the wind.

I walk towards the cape. The pinnacle of land slices the horizon in two, presenting me with two separate seas. One green. One a dark flat blue. Both angry. The swell is huge and an offshore wind brushes back the white crests of the waves so they stream out behind them as they thunder inland. To the West they dwarf the spines of rock that on calmer days provide sunbathing spots for cormorants. I skirt the meadow where the oratory squats, unperturbed by the storm, and look down into the cove on the Eastern side.

They are there. Eight dark noses point skywards, rising and falling. Grey Seals. They are often found bottling in the shelter of the cape, but today the violence of the sea is keeping them awake. Their size is always a surprise. It is particularly striking today as their wide bodies are thrust upwards by the heavy swell, and roll over the waves like penguins sliding on snow. The nearest one has a dappled brow, he looks frustrated by the relentless shifting of the water. I try to get closer but the wind pushes me from behind and I do not want to find myself in there with them.

I crouch in the lee of a wall watching the sleepless seals and think of violets.