AFON
From Flushing to Mylor – A Diary.
It’s a warm November morning, two days after the new moon. The sun is burning through the clouds and I am feeling restless, so I walk.
12.15 The ebb tide means the water is too low. We have to get the ferry from the end of the pier – its weed-encrusted skeleton exposed. The valley of the river swamp (what Flushing was once known as) waves from across the water.
12.30pm In Flushing. It is quiet as I walk through pastel houses, past bespectacled gnomes and a man washing his car.
Flies buzz around the last remaining blackberries and I forget that it is nearly the end of November.
12.35 Herb Robert peeps out from between ivy. Oak and beech leaves rustle on the ground, forming eddies in the wind, but I can still hear the sound of the docks from across the water.
It’s too warm for a coat.
12.40 Out on the green pasture, where cows used to roam in the summer, the grass is just as green – almost phosphorescent. I can see the lighthouse at Place glinting in the sun, perched on the edge of undulating hills that drop down into the water.
12.45 Old oaks cling to the hillside, their leaves shedding and baron arms cutting calligraphy across the blue expanse below.
12.48 It’s too warm for a jumper.
12.50 An oak, crusty with lichen dangles between sea and sky, reaching its arms up to the strange phenomena and bending inland with the sea winds. A black-backed gull circles the rocks below.
1.10 I can hear the waves to my right and crows squawking in the tree tops to my left while blackbirds get ready for winter. There is something surreal about walking through a green field fringed with oak trees and brambles and hearing the lap of waves on the rock pools below. It is a liminal space.
A robin stares at me from the branch of a dead oak that is reaching out to the water below. There are many fallen oaks along this path, leaning down, resting at the end of their long lives. With lichen fingers, they grasp at the water as if crying out for the liquid expanse, that unlike humans, they have not yet conquered.
1.20 Crows are lording over the seaweed-encrusted rocks – a lunar-like landscape right next to the sea.
I jump a stile into a field dotted with the last remains of oil-seed rape, their yellow flowers bright in the sunshine. The metal fence post beside me is being played like a flute by the wind.
1.25 A small murmuration of silhouetted birds are flying above the yellow field. Cheeping, they flitter as the sun shines through their wings. Now the water below is dense with boat masts, each white pole an arrow pointing to the sky, saying ‘look-up’.
A pied wagtail darts above the strand line.
1.35 An egret stalks the beach as I enter Mylor Harbour – an unmistakable figure cut against the glassy water.
In the wind, the pine above my head sounds like a storm at sea. The masts clink and a gull calls out into the salty air.
1.40 Time for lunch.
2.20 I roll out of the café, more club-sandwich than human, and plod through the churchyard towards Mylor Bridge. Underfoot, yellowing leaves crunch and I spot a lonely primrose.
2.30 Creeping between the houses on a rocky footpath, I travel inland along Mylor creek.
Creek is a good name for a place where the trees twinge as they lurch towards the water’s edge, the masts rattle and the mud-flats shift. At this time of year, everything seems to sink towards the earth, creaking.
2.40 A snipe paddles through the mud, dipping its straw-like beak, in search of its own lunch. Gulls are illuminated against the cloudy sky above, in the dregs of afternoon sun. Field mushrooms poke up through the turf of a front lawn and a snail sleeps stationary on a drainpipe.
2.50 I walk over Mylor bridge into the village, startling a blackbird. My walk ends at the bus stop. The Christmas lights are already strewn up, dangling from the clock-tower, glinting in the autumn sunlight – it’s that time of year again.