An anniversary day out

Tuesday 1 September

Tomorrow is our 42^nd wedding anniversary but today is forecasted to have better weather so we decide to take our celebratory day out today. We head for the coast planning to have what may be our last dip of the year in the sea.

We have lunch at a garden centre on the way, sitting on a spacious terrace in the dappled shade of an olive tree with Ellie at our feet. Unfortunately I've left my camera in the car and I can't be bothered to put my mask on and go back all the way round the one-way system to get it.

The path starts at the back of a village's churchyard, . . .

. . . crosses a small stream via a wooden footbridge . . .

and then climbs through a wood.

We pass a clump of Knapweed in full sun. It’s covered with what I think are moths, judging by the way they fly.

Why so many? Is this their favourite nectar-plant? Is there a colony living nearby? Or is it just that the knapweed is at its best? I know very little about butterflies, and even less about moths.

Soon we glimpse the sea.

We head down to our favourite beach, accessible only on foot or by boat. Unfortunately there’s been a landslip and the path has been diverted and we take several wrong turnings - which, as you may have realised by now is normal on our walks. Luckily, today they’re the result of Frog’s choices so I don’t have to feel guilty.

Ellie starts to look unhappy and I wonder if she’s remembering our last visit with my sister and niece three weeks earlier. Because of the diversion, the final climb down to the beach has to be made on a precarious ladder 20 or so feet long. Then, even though she was shaking, Frog was able to pick her up under his arm and carry her down, but today she struggles frantically and (by mistake) makes bloody gashes all the way up his forearm with her claws.

Somehow though we all make it down. The beach is empty . . .

. . . which is a good thing as Frog has forgotten his swimmers and has to go into the water in his birthday suit.

The water is divine. Calm, clear and surprisingly warm. I put my head under several times, hoping to clear my slight migraine. I wonder if the migraine is the result of the significant date which makes me even more aware than usual of my inadequacies (of which more in another post, perhaps).

We bask in the sun, while Ellie lies in our shade, panting and drinking copious amounts of water. Last time we brought a sunshade for her but then we had an athletic 18-year-old with us who carried it. We decide it’s time to move. 

Ellie is much happier getting back up the ladder, mostly under her own steam with Frog helping.

Now we’re more sure about the path, we have time to savour the walk through the undercliff. I remember that early new potatoes used to be grown on terraces here up until quite recently and I wonder how on earth they managed to clear some space.

As well as wildflowers there are berries everywhere, including these which I think (and later confirm) belong to the Common or Purging Buckthorn.

In spite of its name, it’s apparently much less common than the Alder Buckthorn, which has red or purple berries and I think I may have growing in the garden from time to time but have yet to confirm, and strongly laxative as you might expect. According to Richard Mabey in his Flora Britannica: ‘when the latrine pits of the Benedictine Abbey at St Albans were excavated in the 1920s, great numbers of [Purging] buckthorn seeds were found mixed up with the fragments of cloth the monks used as lavatory paper.’

It grows on chalky soil and, as we’re on the East Devon coast where (as I’ve said before) the soil starts to change from sandy to chalky, that makes sense.

I’m interested in the Buckthorns because at the start of the Lockdown I saw my first Brimstone butterfly, a gorgeous lemon-yellow fluttery thing, and the Buckthorns are where the female lays her eggs. (What was I saying earlier about each type of wild plant having its niche . . . ?)

As we turn inland to walk back down to the village, I take my last look at the seascape - it may not be as stunning as the Mediterranean, but I love the soft blues and greys  . . .

. . . and at the village church . . .

. . . which makes me think of that other church where Frog and I married all that time ago, in that other village where we still live.

Just married