Kate Timney

Today the wind is whipping salt water into the air and softening lines between land, sea and sky. Water shifts and moulds this coastline, keeps it on the move, covering the roads with each high tide and shaping channels and inlets as it carves through soft marshland. There are lapwings, endangered now and a lucky sight, picking their way along the edge of the water, and the thought arises that they were likely here, when the coast was home to Roman Centurions, or when it hosted Plantagenet Kings.

Their call sounds a peewit into the breeze. The line of Hadrian’s Wall is a mound covered in low, wind-gnarled trees. Stones from the wall can be seen in Drumburgh castle. There is a collapse of time at work with ancient history mingling with today, as it always does.