Sea and skylarks

This morning we went for a family walk/wheel at Samphire Hoe, which is a nature reserve outside Dover, between the white cliffs and a huge sea wall, on land created from the spoil excavated from the Channel Tunnel. It's one of our occasional walks, so I've blipped it several times before. Today it was overcast, with hazy cloud over the and before we left it rained, but it was beautifully peaceful, with huge expanses of wild flowers and grasses: red and white clover, golden birds foot trefoil, vivid pink pyramid orchids and pink-mauve mallow, and many more. The French coast was faint and smudgy through the fine mist, a huge container ship looked as though it was hovering on the horizon, and a few tiny, fragile yachts were almost lost between sea and cloud. Above our heads, the sky was full of singing skylarks. The photo looks west towards Folkestone, with the long line of the Harbour Arm, from which ferries used to leave for Boulogne and Calais, running along the horizon.