online: 23 march 2009 modified: 8, 9 march 2009 8 march 2009 coastal weather
Brittany
...i'm writing this indoors as the pale sun is slowly disappearing behind a line of trees and houses across the bay...
...and now that it has gone the clouds that were tinged with gold turn bluey-grey as we move into the cone of night (as Shelley describes the tapering shadow of the earth in sunlit space)...
...my memories of today are of the strongly contrasting aspects of coastal weather (more vivid than the mild climate of London)... first the protected micro-climate of a wooded valley, all green and muddy after rain... then the windy plateau above, with high-banked lanes on rocky ground between thick-walled granite cottages, some old, some new... of earth walls of vegetation, mosses, wild flowers... and mud covered with fallen beech leaves... and then (as a forecast rainstorm blows up from the west) sudden wind howling in trees and electric power cables for a few minutes... and then the storm is gone and mild warm air returns and walking again becomes an easy progress through sheltered lanes and forest paths...
...and then, emerging from this little valley, after a few kilometres of mostly gentle walk, to encounter noisy sea waves crashing and roaring against a beach of boulders with occasional large waves reaching further up the shore than did most of the others...
...and now daylight has gone, the wind has dropped, and it's time to be indoors behind thick walls and double glazing to eat and talk and edit these notes to the format of the diary...
for comfortable line length set the window to about two-thirds of the screen width
You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial
purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you
respect the copyright of quotations.
If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please
send a copyright permission request to jcj 'at' publicwriting.net
(replace 'at' and spaces by the @ sign)
