Sunset and the whale

When you can see the horizon, on days when you can spin and see the sea and the clouds surrounding you, there’s a feeling of being alive like no other. Here’s the beautiful sandy beach at Taftend, one of my favourite spots for an evening walk.

Here you can walk into the sunset with all the swagger of a cowboy.

Today, there’s something curious, though. There’s the enormous skeleton of a whale on the slip-road leading down onto the beach. It looks as if a tractor’s made its way onto the sands and dragged the rotted corpse up and left it here to degenerate. It must have been here for quite a while. The stench has almost gone.

Rotting whale has the overwhelming stench of smelling salts. It reminds me of the smell of the woman with body odour who shared our couchette on the night train to Barcelona in 1990. It really is that bad.

Here’s the Puffin Whisperer capturing it on her phone.

And I was next in the queue.

We share our Earth with fabulous beasts. I never cease to marvel at them.