Malcolm D. Welshman shares the highlights of a favourite summer walk.
FROM Durlston Head in Dorset, the coastline stretches westward with its limestone strata upended in a ragged grey toothcomb, riddled with the skeletal workings of disused quarries.
Every summer I walk the path that winds along the precipitous edge.
Below is a world of sheer cliffs, pocketed with tussocks of pink sea thrift that plunge down to meet an undulating quilt of blue and green – a sea flecked white on breezy days.
Black-headed gulls whirl and plummet in the gullies.
Their cries echo against the rocks, blending with the pounding surf far below.
A breeze funnels up. Brine-filled and fresh, it blows across my face and fills my lungs.
Kittiwakes and fulmars sail past at eye level, stiff-winged in the eddies of air.
Below, dinner-jacketed guillemots and razorbills hurl themselves out to skim the sea and land in bubbles of white.
Another jewel flashes into view. The comical puffin, resplendent with black and white plumage, white cheeks and orange-red bill.
Grassy slopes fold back on to farmland half a mile inland, criss-crossed with dry-stone walls.
Some have toppled over, their limestone slabs fanning out down the hill like scattered packs of cards.
Here are pockets of hidden blackthorn and secretive muddy pools.
Young heifers, roaming free, snort with alarm and plough away through the brambles.
Such pockets are a haven for adders, sometimes not long out of hibernation.
There are often half a dozen snakes in the space of a few yards, and under slabs of stone are snails banded in black and white.
There’s red slugs, too, and ants in a swarming frenzy of egg-carrying once disturbed.
Ahead are stiles for me to clamber over and short turf to pound across, where drifts of marble-white butterf
