Just three chimneys left in the row of terraced houses at Birling Gap, Sussex. Sea erosion has claimed a lot more of the white chalk cliffs between Brighton, Beachy Head and Eastbourne in the past few years. Once there were a dozen dwellings in this terrace row, houses for the coastguards; the first was demolished in 1972; erosion has been continuing since to claim about a metre of cliff per year. The chalk washes away but the flints remain on the beach, rounded by the wave action.
The apparently off-the-cliff viewpoint of my photo, ten metres up from the beach and ten metres out from the cliff, is not because I have received a drone for Christmas but simply the view from the handy steel staircase accessing down to the beach; the latest in a number of such conveniences installed by the National Trust, the previous ones having been washed away by storms.