A bright and breezy start to the day, with a complex sky of scuffed, arced and steaked cloud, dappled with patches of bright blue.
After the soft golds and bronzes of later summer, splashes of bolder autumn colour are starting to appear around the Park. Hawthorns are laden with a dense crop of crimson berries, while around them, Horse Chestnuts and Sycamores are splashed with sulphur yellow leaves.
In the grassland below, Bristly Ox-tongue, Fleabane and Ragwort add touches of sunshine yellow, while the shortest downland turf is dotted with pink Wild Thyme and tiny white-flowered Eyebright (though the very closest of inspections reveals it’s unusual flower also features a rich ‘egg-yolk’ yellow and streaks of purple).
Near the ‘hay-rake quarr’ a tiny ‘forest’ of miniature Wild Carrot is in bloom, just a 4-5 inches tall here, with the white umbels of the unrelated Yarrow also in bloom nearby.
At the edge of a patch of bare ground, the brick-red flowers of ‘Poor Man’s Weather Vane’ or Scarlet Pimpernel are almost open (like many other flowers, the petals close in the absence of sunshine – hence the name – no use for predicting the weather, just telling you what it is doing!).
Overhead, Swallows skim by, heading eastwards, though more of a trickle than a flood today, with just a few hundred seen during the morning rounds.
A pair of Ravens ‘yell’ at each other – almost face-to-face at the top of the Mile Markers, as a Roe Deer bounds, loose-limbed down the Gully slopes as I approach. A Kestrel balances on the gusty breeze above the Lighthouse slopes, leaning into the wind with wing or tail with effortless mastery.
Rock Pipits skitter and dart along the clifftop, as Goldfinches fill the air with their jangling calls from the grassland and scrub above the Coast Path.