shewhomust | A short walk on the Heritage Coast

Tuesday morning was almost bright; the car battery was so flat that even opening the doors required negotiation; and lockdown was imminent: three reasons to drive out to Seaham and go for a walk along the cliffs. This is post-industrial landscape, but cleaned up, rebranded as 'heritage'. Black waves no longer break on black beaches, and there are art installations and plenty of labels. Here's a chunk of fossil tree that turned up at Dawdon Colliery:

- a giant ancestor of today's club mosses, apparently.

durham_rambler reckons we walked 1.6 miles. along the cliff and back again: which is nothing, but probably the furthest I've walked since August, and I took more photos than I have since then, too, so I'm not complaining.

The sun came out while we were walking:

This is Ginny's Dene, tidied up to permit drainage of the site:

Here's one of those art things - or a part of one - with a glimpse of the pond behind it (there are warning about the water, more post-industrial drainage):

The text panel explains: 'waKe / thEn / sLeep / deeP' with the capital letters in red and aligned, so that you know the image represents kelp. Another panel complains: 'Foul / pUking / guLls / Make / A / Reek'. They do indeed.

The best thing about the cranesbill post was the lichen above the art:

- that and the blue sky behind it!

A walk by the sea made us hungry for fish and chips, and if we could have found a public convenience and somewhere to sit in the sun, we'd have indulged on the spot. Lacking either of these faciities, we came home, and

durham_rambler drove up to Bells to collect haddock and chips.