What might be lurking in the dark?

Dusk is a good time to walk. Landscapes soften, sounds are muted, shadows lengthen then fade; the world settles. In summer months, with the sun setting late, there can be a refreshing coolness in those last hours of daylight; the mania of high season tourism becalmed as the heat of the afternoon fades away. Two summers ago, on a fine evening, I announced I was going for a stroll. The day had been spent on the beach at Putsborough Sands in north Devon: sandcastles, a picnic, cricket, a bit of swimming – all very traditional and safe.

We had returned to our nearby rented farmhouse for dinner, early enough to put our two-year-old son to bed at a reasonable hour. With my parents, brother and sister-in-law there too, it was a regular clan gathering.

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But with light still in the sky, I wanted to stretch my legs, so drove back to the beach and took a path above the cliffs on the northern side of Baggy Point, a headland separating Croyde and Morte Bays. On my right, as I headed almost due west, the high point dropped straight into a distant sea that swirled silver, blue and pink in the last of the sun’s rays. Occasionally, and more so as I drew towards the end of the promontory, I glimpsed Lundy Island on the horizon.

I had judged that I had enough time to reach the tip of Baggy Point, turn back along its southern edge, then cut across to where I had begun with just enough time to spare before real darkness set. At the halfway stage, I realised it would be a close run thing. There were few other people on the headland and most were walking back to well-lit Croyde. I, instead, had to cut back across farmland to the path along the clifftops.

There have been plenty of times when I’ve walked routes that, with hindsight, were riskier than I might have liked: usually because the weather had made conditions difficult, or because screes were looser than anticipated, or drops were more severe. But usually doubts came later, as I reflected on what might have been.

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By contrast, the flat, pastoral land of Baggy Point offered no dangers; not really anyway. Even at the closest point, the easy pathway was a distance of several metres from the cliffs which plunged into the north Atlantic. Only an idiot could come to harm – or someone walking in the pitch black.

Hurrying back across the point, I missed a less-travelled track once or twice in the gloom. Walking the last hundred yards along the clifftops, where the going was nonetheless clearer, I could see very little at all – though no less than the two people who I met travelling in the other direction. I wondered how far they intended to go; and whether they had a torch, as I should have done.

I arrived back to the bosom of my family, feigning insouciance and feeling a sense of relief that was at odds with the reality of any danger I had actually faced. There is, it transpires, a manifest difference between taking steps into the unknown and groping around familiar places in the darkness.