Monday, July 04, 2011
Saturday 2nd July
Old-age blues having set in, I wondered if we could go to the sea. We could and did. Eventually. Five minutes into the drive Greger realised he hadn't packed his jeans. As he drew up outside the house again, I handily recalled the cold flask of Ribena I'd made the night before and left in the fridge. This put us on an even footing in the telling-off stakes.
"Good job I remembered," I chortled. "Just the thing for a walk on a hot day." I would remember this later.
After a pleasant drive down, we started our walk at the Beachy Head triangulation pillar.
I recently decided to start "collecting" benchmark numbers (apparently they're only called flush brackets when they're fixed to a wall or building as opposed to a free-standing pillar); but as I'd already done loads of walking by then and hardly given trig points a glance, it seems a pretty futile exercise. After all, I've missed loads of 'em. However, they often make a pleasing picture from an aesthetic point of view; and this one is easily baggable being a few metres from the road.
Greger pointed out the little group of people who'd gathered just beyond the "Cliff edge" warning with its graphic representation of a figure toppling into empty space, and we shook our heads in disapproval. Then we went over and did exactly the same.
There were plenty of people on the cliff walk, some clearly doing the whole South Downs Way (they're the ones with big rucksacks and unhappy expressions), but it never felt crowded.
We saw one stonechat family and I had a glimpse of a cuckoo. Meadow pipits were singing and displaying everywhere, but I think this might be a young rock pipit.
Birling Gap was busy as usual. Erosion of the chalk cliffs happens much more rapidly here than at Beachy Head, apparently. One of the coastguard cottages (on the right-hand end of the row) was demolished in the 1970s, and the National Trust has decided to lose them all to the encroaching sea rather than take any defensive measures to save them. The residents are not happy, but it's difficult to see exactly what the NT could do. 
All along the cliff-tops we had the company of gulls and fulmars. The fulmars would come up from below and be past you before you could get the camera out, zooming along the cliff-edge before dropping to plane stiff-winged across the chalk face.
After Birling Gap we had lunch. "You've got the Ribena, haven't you?" said Greger confidently as he unwrapped a chicken leg.
Nope. After forgetting it, then remembering it, at home, I'd now left it in the boot of the car. So instead of a nice cool fruity drink we had to make do with lukewarm water.
Never mind - look at the geology. Flint bands make dark dotted lines across the white chalk. I've simplified the information I found on earthhistory.org.uk (with www. prefix). The flint was formed from siliceous organisms such as a kind of plankton. The bands have probably formed at regular intervals because the plankton blooms were seasonal. (Greger says he's not sure about this as it would put the seasons rather far apart.)
From the seventh of the Seven Sisters we looked over the lovely Cuckmere Haven to Seaford Head. Continuing the theme of forgetfulness, I neglected to photograph (or even see) the trig point indicated on the map.
We made our way down into the view, and behind the shingle bank at the top of the beach a wheatearof a rather pied appearance was seen perching on top of a bush.
Shame I couldn't manage a better photo as it flew over to the shingle, but the picture gives some idea of its contrasty colouration and the white "stitching" in the corner of the tail.
I was happy with the sighting. "You and your wheatears," said Greger. Yeah, well. But I've always said: "The day I'm tired of wheatears will be the day I hang up my bins."
A flock of twenty-five curlews flying calling towards the sea was the last significant bird sighting of the day before we emerged onto the road at Exceat and caught the bus back to Beachy Head.
// posted by Christine @ 5:18 AM 
