I am alone today. It is the equinox, the ‘last day of summer’- and the day after a full silver moon. I head down the lanes. The light is ageing with the year and heavy, it lazes over the valley with that peculiar slant of September. Blackberries still stud the hedgerows but already they are going over. I try several before I find one firm enough to eat. I enter a corridor of ivy. I am flanked by pale sceptres of berries. This is its time, when the louder plants of the hedgerow withdraw and the ivy revels in its own green and regal resilience. The bushes quiver with the drone of wasps, drunk on their favourite nectar. The sound ripples like water, thickening the air so I push myself through. As I round the bend my body expands into salt-drenched sunlight. A curlew’s lonely call reminds me that beyond the copper water of the stream the sea is waiting.

The sea has retreated in a low moon-tide. I do not go down to the sand. I scramble onto the headland, furred with lichen, and watch a fishing boat. Flocks of black backed gulls, herring, and common gulls flicker in its wake—deep black against the sparkling grey water. Two grey seals watch with me, from the lee of the rocks, dappled heads rising from the kelp, observing with calm anticipation. The fisherman is alone, silhouetted against a lattice work of stacked crab pots. He hauls in his markers, swiftly disentangling his catch and casting what he cannot use back into the water. The markers are kept on the boat, long poles with black flags which flutter in an incoming breeze. They jut out at jaunty angles so the tiny boat resembles a sombre entrant to a regatta.

He starts the engine and heads north to the cape. The cracked holler of the gulls whirls up and then subsides as they launch forward en masse, the tips of their wings kiss the water, streaming after the boat like the tail of a kite.