Through a camera you can frame a jumble of pylons, low buildings, a lighthouse and a power station. Small innocuous homes sit like compact, self sufficient huts out of season.
One of the few black cottages has thick yellow window frames and a borderless garden belonging to the artist and film maker Derek Jarmen, now kept and overseen by his partner.
The shingle merges with the garden, without a border to speak of. The garden and the landscape beyond it casts a spell which was difficult to articulate, something about it being both bleak and beautiful. How do plants and animals survive at the edge of this otherworldly lunar-esque dimension? The wilderness of the place helped it become an SSSI, a site of special scientific interest. The only boundaries seem to be the few roads.
At the time of our visit I got out the car and marvelled at the distant horizon, where large ships could be spotted and in the foreground, weather battered boats lay up on shingle. A large rusted tank rests along with other skeletal detritus. Walking in the distance, a visitor, with their partner trailing behind.
