The day started with two brief showers. A cold breeze, but the sun came back, and stayed. Driving to Rye we noticed banks of alexanders, bright green with creamy yellow flowers, at the kerbside. At the gravel pits we counted a flock of over thirty swans grazing amongst the sheep.

All the way the gardens were bright with spring flowers, particularly marigolds, which run riot …

Back home I walked along the deserted beach past the power station. The west side of the Ness has a different vegetation. It’s flat. There are patches of moss, islands of dead broom, thrift and an abundance of foxgloves. At the sea’s edge there is horned poppy, but little if any sea kale.

Further past the pylons there is a golden island of gorse. Here, even in the cold wind, the air is scented. Gorse has a delicate herbal perfume not unlike rue. In the right weather conditions the whole Ness smells of it.

There is a passage into the largest clump, a huge area a hundred yards or more in diameter; deep inside, a golden light and a heady perfume. The bushes seem ancient – serpentine gnarled trunks, as if wrung ferociously in an easterly gale. Many of them, long dead, form a carpet like a writhing snake pit.

The great bushes are about ten feet high, very luxuriant, and the warm winter has produced the most beautiful blossom.

This evening the silence in this grove was truly golden. It is a beautiful thought that Pliny says gorse was used to catch the specks of gold from the gravel that prospectors panned.