When the sun is high and hot, the surf shines like a wet blade as it surges through the soft chalk cliffs, white stone running with deep blue veins. The estuary is murkier, but the oystercatchers and the herons still bathe in the clearer bends of the greyish-brown waters, overlooked by cows, hoof-deep in the softened mud, snoozing in the warmth of the sky and the earth.
It seems like everything is melting in the languorous heat. There is a haze hovering over the fields of wildflowers, the birds and the bumblebees are dozing in the underbrush, and the grass smiles in the thrill of the silvered breeze. In the distance, a church bell chimes, and its echo drags its feet as it roams.
Up above, beyond the gorse-crested seat that overlooks the steep valley, the meandering floodplains, and the sea, the Long Man rests in the shade, stretched over the hillside, feeling the strain in his limbs and the ache of his bones fade as the odd cloud passes overhead, and he smiles, and feels his tired body sink beneath the rows of chalk-dust farmland and the rich teals of grassland meadows.