Edges, Sea, John Muir Trail

 

Rock formations and colours in Cove Bay, detail

Then just for a moment, as I sit down at the table outside the cottage, a burst of birdsong, catching the last of the evening light. Time, light, is a substance to be acted on, gathered, garnered.

In the wood, on the approach path, there was one pheasant, then one crow and just after that, one dark deer crossed the path, jumped over it, without a sound. Further on the path narrows, becomes a ridge, and there is a sheer drop, a cliff-edge drop to the river below, but it is lined with small trees, saplings, bushes, undergrowth so you might never know until it’s too late, that there is nothing for your feet to hold onto once you’d stepped out. On the far bank there are slabs of red stone, like shafts or walls, hiding the interior of some guarded kingdom.

Further on still, there’s the old bridge, yellow stone, just a little crumbling at the edges, that James VI crossed on his way to London in the 1600s, so I’m told. The mid-section of the bridge is draped with ivy, a green shawl and the yellow stone glints in the last of the light as the sun goes down, in the afternoon.

It has been a day of edges, the clifftop path, looking down over the edge, to the sea, on either side of Cove bay, a natural harbour. Lines of rocks curve round gently from the shore like giant ribs. Or maybe the rim of some ancient crater from an underground volcano’s eruption, in some unimaginable aeons ago. Or maybe last week in geological terms. You could imagine those lines of curving rocks rising and falling with the tides, moving slightly with in-breath and out-breath.

The sky separates into two. On one side, blue and bright, on the other, a film of grey approaches. Underneath it, the sea turns dark as unpolished silver. The two skies, two seas, two worlds – one lit up, the other shrouded. How different these moods make us.

 

Right now, with darkening sky, and the sound of the river a few metres away, as it moves towards the sea, I’m waiting in twilight for the stars to come out. A loose wave of geese fly overhead, way high up. And on the clifftop path, looking down on Cove Bay, a flock of oystercatchers moved across the sky from one jutting out headland to the next, crossing over the sea, as if on a tightrope or held in a string bag, intent on herding home the afternoon light.

Another skyline, closer to evening, on the last part of the walk back – was of straight bands of purple cloud, and evening turquoise blue, all above a squint horizon. Which is impossible to capture on a photograph, as horizons often tilt when I take photos but this one leaned from west (a clump of trees) to east (another headland) with complete insouciance. I pointed out this phenomenon to C, who agreed that the horizon had slipped a little, showed its leanings and its longings towards the east and south.

 

Earlier, there had been a cloud trimmed with a patch of rainbow, the sole material to hand, as the cloud-stitcher pulled his threads and knots of fabric together to cover and decorate this corner of sky. And later, the light from descending sun filtered through two holes in the cloud and turned into lines of light, like ribbons or beacons. I think it is a message said C, nodding with conviction. I have never seen such a thing before. It was later, after we had visited the village shop and bought some logs for the stove that we followed the uphill path and saw the straight bands of cloud and colour and the squint horizon.

Later still when the path (part of the John Muir trail) turned into some woods with the ravine plunging to the river and some beech trees still vivid orange and the silent dark deer crossed the path, a lucky omen, and the path came out onto a road and just before that, a lodge  house at the side of the track and there was a woman calling someone’s name and she told us she was calling for her cat. I don’t know where he’s got to, but if he doesn’t come, I’ll phone him she says. While I’m trying to imagine the cat answering the phone she says he is fitted with a tracking device round his neck and he will hear her voice and if she says ‘treats’ this should work magic. As we walk away, a black cat appears, meowing loudly and the woman says, there you are, where were you, where did you get to? 

The road here is a bridge over the ravine and it looks out onto another bridge, the railway bridge and beyond that, the new road bridge, an ugly concrete structure on stone stilts, built in the 1980s. And beyond that, the oldest bridge, the ivy-shawled one crossed over by  James VI, but no longer passable for traffic.

Steps down, steep slate steps, slippery with fallen leaves, and there’s  a wooden railing at the side of  the steps and a rope above it to hold onto as you make your way down to the wooden pedestrian bridge over the river and the cottage is there on the other side. Just a few metres further on, the river meets the sea. The massive ravine the river swept through has flattened out into a small dip, but it still needs a bridge, the last of its kind, wooden, miniature. The second last, the ancient ivy-shawled one, is visible from the cottage, and beyond that one, all the other bridges fan out in a series of modernity, to accommodate the rail and road traffic.

Cove Bay is reached by going through a tunnel in the cliff, and there are other tunnels possibly used by smugglers, but blocked off now. More cliffs on the land side of the bay, and on the seaward side, a stone cottage and a pier, with piles of lobster pots leaning against the wall. There are two fishing boats in the bay, and the sea comes in onto a mixture of sand and pebbles. I bent down and touched the water as a wave came in and it ran over my shoes.  

 

The cliff’s bare stone is revealed, and it is swirled in patterns, like wave formations or the afterthoughts of galaxies. From a distance, from the other side of the bay, with the wide stone pier, this cliff looks sliced up like cake about to be served up, then abandoned. And, jutting out into the sea, a head-shaped piece of rock, complete with eye socket. A giant turtle, petrified, clearly. And just beyond it, almost in the next bay, there’s a giant hare, also turned to stone. Further along the clifftop path, overlooking Pease Bay, I look down on black specks in the water. Do you think these are birds or buoys? I ask C. He looks through his binoculars. Surfers, he says. I look through them too. Black wet-suited surfers, some seeming motionless, others moving along the swell of the waves, in the grey-blue water.

One or two faint stars are out now. And the plump Moon, almond shaped, lurking behind the trees, its surface criss-crossed with black branches.