Shifting, Slipping, Sliding

Ceaseless change | Crumbling Cliffs | Cold Swims

It is later than planned by the time I get there. I am always running behind because I have an unrealistic grasp of time - I always believe I can fit all the things into too small an amount of time. And so it is early evening by the time I reach my (planned for lunchtime) stop off at Lulworth on my way further down the Dorset coast. I park and follow the hill down towards the main bay. It is busy still, though the brightness of the day has gone, and there are people clustered at the entrance to the bay.

Lulworth is a perfect turquoise circle, the unstable cliffs folded, strata lines preserved like splayed pages of a book. Sandy, pale, enormous; the rocks could fall and crush us at any moment. The way the cliffs here have moved, the lines of sediment that once would have been horizontal now swooping, tipped on their sides, makes it clear that the steady ground is no more than an illusion.

I have been thinking, lately, about crumbling, about tiny parts of us slipping away. It happens every day, things in us sliding, maybe making way for something new, maybe for space or absence or newness, whether it’s a tiny baby growing or someone older, their health declining. With a parent with Alzheimer’s I see these changes, spaces, slippings and slidings daily. The crunching of these cliffs, the lines of what they once were, what they are now, the inherent ability for change, is rooted even here, in stone which we think of as immovable. It makes clear how tiny and breakable we little humans are.

The tide is high and I climb up, onto the cliff between the bay and stair hole, the caverns on the other side. There is a pale stone staircase climbing into the sky then stopping, abruptly, steps to nowhere. I climb it, of course. In a story, these steps would lead somewhere. Perhaps at the top I would vanish. As it is I can see the silver light on the sea, the Isle of Portland jutting out on the horizon, and all the blue, all the shades of it, from barely there to almost green. I follow round, to stair hole, where the waves boom into craggy holes in the cliffs. Then I follow a road up the hill, further, past hidden houses till I get to the footpath that goes to the base of the quieter cliffs.

The steps here are thick with mud, deep silted puddles. I have both wellies and hiking boots but helpfully both are in the car. I start down, determined, but soon I am slipping and sliding dangerously. If I get down I will not get back up. I am forced to retreat.

Instead, I drive up to the cliff top carpark. I walk down to Durdle Door, the iconic rocky arch, but I turn away from that beach, where photographers are lining up to catch the sunset, couples lounging on the steps down, phones out. I turn instead to the other side of the headland - Man O War bay. This beach, unlike the others, is empty. It is equally beautiful. The water is flat, sheltered by the headland, which has those same collapsing lines scored through it, record of its history, its transformation. There is a reef off shore and white waves break over it, crashing and shushing, but at the shoreline the water is still. I change and go in.

It is still cold enough to make me gasp. It is so clear. It shelves quickly and I am deep enough to swim in a few steps. I can see a huge raft of dark seaweed and I go around it. The water is such a deep green that it doesn’t feel real. The cliffs burn ochre in the dying sun and I follow the curve of the bay. The only sound is the wash, the rush, the slide of the shingle as the tide comes in, pulls back, comes in. Then there is the louder, wilder crescendos of the white water further out, breaking against the natural barrier. The sun flares and my head, above the water, is warm. I dunk it to get rid of the cold line that sits at my shoulders. There is so much colour, in the land, in the sea, that it feels unreal.

I get out before I get cold and the climb back up warms me from the inside. I reach the cliffs above in time to see the sun drop red beyond the horizon. I look down at my empty bay, tiny now, the cliffs curving protectively round it. Moments ago I was down there in the water, a tiny speck below once collapsed cliffs, fragile in a turquoise sea.