It is strangely still, tucked in the shelter of a hanging valley (see glossary), high upon the Dover cliff top.
Below me, ghostly ferries emerge from a surface sea fog. Blown in by thirty knots of north east breeze. Trapped against the sheer white buttress. Flowing along its face, like bonfire smoke.
Away, across the fields, the South Foreland light peers above chalk rolling downland.
Reached by a rollercoaster bridleway.
Which snakes along the saw-tooth shore. Three hundred and fifty feet above the cobalt blue sea.
Glossary
A Hanging Valley: Either, Gouged by glacial erosion; Or, cut by river action, at a time when the sea level was higher. The former being the more likely cause, in the case of porous chalk. In both cases, the result is a valley which ‘hangs’ above sea level.
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