Sunlit air sparkles and fizzes, atoms dancing after the storm. A black-pepper scatter of jackdaws hangs in the wind, swaying like a shoal of fish opposing the tide. Herring gulls glide and scream, underwings white with reflected light.
The sea is graphite-grey, heavy waves exploding and casting sheets of whipped egg-white foam across the sand. I stand back from the racing, hissing water, keeping well clear of the sandstone cliff that rises so abruptly from the shore.
Made famous by a certain TV drama series, this rampart of golden stone is one of the most unstable in the UK. Its base is lined with fallen boulders chunked into rough cubes the size of fridge‑freezers. Large slips are common, with whole sections breaking away without warning, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Wetter weather has increased the size and frequency of rock falls. Heavy, prolonged downpours seep into the stone, causing large sections to suddenly flake off without warning. In October, thousands of tonnes came down. No one would want to go near the cliff, yet in 1944, soldiers of the US Rangers and British commandos practised for D-day by scaling it with rope ladders. One fell to his death.
This autumn’s storms have been minor compared with the Great Gale that hit 200 years ago, in November 1824. For 30 hours, hurricane-force winds of nearly 100mph and a sea surge of over 6 metres overwhelmed the Dorset coastline, sweeping aside buildings and killing about 100 people. Victims included a father and two children in West Bay (then called Bridport Harbour), whose house had flooded.
According to an eyewitness report, the father, “was seen about break of day with his two children, one on his back, the other under his arm, endeavouring to get through the water; but he had not proceeded far, when one of the children fell, and in stooping to take her up, a tremendous wave came and washed them away.”
I think of them as I walk the beach, high water marked with a wavering line of twigs, straw, broken feathers and cuttlefish bone. Caught among it are dozens of small green apples, sea‑bruised and browning.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
