It's quite a trick to ride a bicycle up off the street onto the path past the church's left or northwest corner. The church sits in a hollow cut into the slope; the path continues to climb past the windows and buttresses of its north side. (Small daisies have footholds high in the angles of some of the buttresses.) As I round the corner in the pre-dawn light I sometimes think a person is on the path ahead of me it's one of the rather few upstanding gravestones.
Still climbing, the path crosses the graveyard diagonally to what I call Dawn Point. It's here that the full amazement of a dawn breaks on you. Though you are only a few steps from the town's midpoint, the scene is suddenly almost all wild: the tall and always-different sky, the far cliffs, and the always-different sea.
Bushes hide the drop to the bay. If the tide is full, you can sometimes hear the crump of waves hitting the sea wall, out of sight below. The path turns steeply downward to the actual corner, which is destined in no long time to be undermined.
There is a short line of cottages to the right, and benches below, grouped on a triangle of grass, from which you can continue to contemplate the view. Then you can zigzag down the slope by a choice of routes to a lane called Long Entry. This was once the road eastward out of the town toward Charmouth. But if you turn leftward you find it now comes to a quick end.
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