I THINK of the sunken lanes of West Dorset as bonsai cliffs, the country cousins of their far more famous coastal counterparts.

Walk through these holloways and look closely and slowly your senses glow golden like the sandstone.

There are Babylonian descents of ivy from the branches that curve overhead, and sudden shafts of dusty sunlight.

There are mini-landslides, marked by sludgy heaps and long steep discoloured stains.

Elsewhere, the walls are held together by the frizzy plumbing of roots.

Trunks jut straight out before scrunching up their bark and correcting their course.

Then, when your eye’s attuned and if you’re lucky, you might see something like this.

West Dorset’s answer to Mount Rushmore!

Somebody has scratched the thin lines of a smile but otherwise it seems to be an accident of nature. Even the ivy that provides the idea of hair seems to have curved around the side of the face unprompted.

It makes me smile every time I see it.

(It also reminds me of this photograph called Harvest Festival, taken by the artist John Piper, who was a fan of Dorset, of Portland and Toller Fratrum in particular. I don’t know where Harvest Festival was shot; it’s the image on the front cover of Piper’s book A Painter’s Camera, Tate Gallery, 1987.)

What do you think?

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