Snow on the hills around Hay-on-Wye, Wales.

Moment of realisation when Duncan realises too late that wave is going to drench him. The real force of wave erosion is suddenly going to hit him, just as it shaped the rocks behind. All part of the fun on this BSGS Geology field trip at Serrado on the north coast of Madeira.

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.

Lambeth Bridge from Vauxhall Bridge. No longer any tugboats or barges but the cranes building up the London skyline are reminiscent of the docks’ crane jibs of years gone by. And the clean, clear air and stark winter light is totally different from the smoke celebrated in atmospheric paintings of similar views thick with fog or smog by J.M.W. Turner or Impressionists such as James Whistler and Claude Monet. Even the bright colours and superb detail of Canaletto’s painting from 1746 of Westminster Bridge does not feature such clean, clear light. But, this photo is from midday so no hint of sunrise or sunset: the brown haze near the horizon indicates pollution of nitrous oxides combining with particles, this is the air we breathe.

See also London skyline