This time of year always feels to me like those moments as you ride to the very top of a rollercoaster, with the anticipation building before the accelerating plunge into spring!
Every day brings new changes, as the Park emerges from winter and starts to fill with new life.
The downland is dappled with intense blue-purple Hairy Violets (with darker blue Dog Violets in bloom in the woodland), with lines of densely packed Daisies bordering the paths. Here and there green and brown flowered Early Spider Orchids are increasing in number, though many are still no taller than my thumb, so watch where you step during your daily exercise!
A few Early Purple Orchids are also in bloom – taller and pink, with leaves speckled with black as if splashed with ink, with Green-winged Orchids just starting to burst their buds.
Patches of pink Herb Robert (a wild member of the Geranium family) can be seen in many of the old quarry hollows, with Dandelions glowing in the morning sunshine and the first flowers of Chalk Milkwort also appearing.
Around the meadows, every breath of breeze carries with it the rich scent of Blackthorn blossom and the carolling of Skylarks. In the grass, a tide of yellow Cowslips has swept across many of the meadows, bobbing gently in the breeze. In a sheltered corner, a round, fuzzy-bodied Bee Fly sips nectar from a Primrose flower with his long proboscis.
Rounding a corner near the Drove, my first glimpse this year of a Redstart, looking magnificent in his spring plumage.
Caravan Terrace is a picture at the moment, with banks of Primroses (a paler yellow than the related Cowslips) carpeting the turf, as Speckled Woods flutter along the edge of the scrub and a Red Admiral basks on one of the new benches.
Guillemots and Razorbills bob on the water below the cliffs, with Herring Gulls, Great Black-backed Gulls, Shags and Fulmars also on the wing.