How mad that most cliff edges are open to the public. Despite looming oblivion below, you can walk off the side of miles of coastline without a fence in sight.
You can at least enjoy getting close to the thousands of birds nested in on juts of rocks and shoestring fissures. Bring a pair of binoculars, and you will find marvels above the crashing waves.
My favourite spot drops straight into the sea. The cafe serves the best sausage rolls I have ever tasted. At peak times on a Sunday the walking route matches a shopping centre in footfall. Make sure you like dogs.
But by the evening you can get the place to yourself. My preferred choice is late August, when an orange light boils the sky. At this hour I sit alone with nature.
The bird started as a dot. Something impossible to recognise. The dot grew to a splodge, then a shadow the size of a giraffe. Three fingers stretched out from the end of leathery wings. It zoomed after the seagulls like a bat after flies.
The binoculars dropped from my shaking hands. Adrenaline told me this was the crucial moment to run. But I watched as the shape toom out two more seagulls. After three more It needed a place to land. The cliff edge was the obvious spot.
So at last I ran.
The doors to the cafe are impassable. I hammer on the door, but all that remains inside are crisps, and the best sausage rolls in the world. The glass is as impenetrable as any prison wall. Something shrieks behind me. I wish I was able to hide in the tiniest of cracks.
