The One Behind the Rock

The big one next door has a path that goes behind it and a car park full of coaches. This one has a stream, a gap in the rock about a metre wide, and wet feet.

You walk into the water and follow the cleft in, and for the first few metres it’s dark and loud and you can’t see anything except the walls closing over your head. Then it opens into a chamber maybe fifteen metres across with the falls coming down the far end, and the only light is the strip of sky between the two overhangs — which on a clear morning puts a hard beam straight down onto the water and lights the spray from above.

Everything in there is furred with moss and running wet. I put the phone under my coat between frames and still got flare across half of them from the spray on the lens, which I’ve kept, because that is what being in there is like.

Second stop of the first morning on the island, and already soaked to the knee.