168 At the mouth of a sea cave (Lento’s best with headphones)

Full Episode description

On Portland Bill. Dorset. We climb down jagged rocks. Naturally formed steps, waist deep, towards the water. Evenly uneven. Like narrow walkways. Some puddles along. Sea spray or resting rain? Now crouched down, she’s peering silently into one of the puddles. Look, she says, tiny creatures. They’re just speckles, swimming. 

Rumbling waves roll in from open sea. Break against the sheer rock. Fifteen feet beneath us, deep gurgles. An underwater space, I say, can you hear it? Exposed, then sunk, then exposed again. Can you hear, the way the water seems to bend the air? We listen. Like plucking the opening of a wine bottle, with a wet thumb. Sort of, she says. Is this a good place? She already knows it is. It’s where she wanted us to come. Perfect, I say, swinging round the rucksack to unpack the kit. 

Away up the rock like a mountain goat and she’s gone, semi vertically, back up to the path. Now, sitting alone, with the mics, hardly breathing, still as a statue. Almost at the precipitous edge of the cave mouth. Me and the mics, listening. Cave below to the right. Wild sea to the left, it’s main power a few hundred yards out. Such still listening, makes me daydream. Eyes shut. Imagining I’m inside the sea cave. The waves rolling towards me. Breaking. Fizzing. Slooshing into craggy pools. Making reflections. In light, and in sound.