Country diary: on the site of a drowned town

The 14th-century Gough map of Great Britain, drawn east-uppermost, looks like a pantomime dame's shoe, with Scotland as a long toe, Wales and Cornwall forming an ornate block heel, and

East Anglia and Kent a sort of ankle cuff. I've travelled from Yorkshire to Suffolk, cartographic left to right, to a place marked on the map by a cluster of red roofs and a spire,

indicating one of England's largest towns. But the port of Dunwich is long gone: its bustling harbour obliterated by storm surges and its affluent streets, its guildhall and fine

churches lost to tide after insatiable tide. What remains is a row of well-tended cottages, a pub, a shingle beach and a still-hungry latte-coloured sea, sucking noisily at the pebbles. This

high-summer excursion with fellow writer Matt Gaw was intended to be one of sultry air, dragonflies, a swim maybe. Instead we're buffeted past anglers huddled in tents backed to the

wind, each in thrall to his own tiny arc of horizon, tied by lines gleaming like spider silk. Out there, wraiths of drizzle dither, alternately harried and tarried by the wind – not yet part

of the sea, nor still part of the sky. The beach seems to be scattered with dung, but the dark clods are peat from marshes inundated long ago, coughed up for a final touch of sunlight on

their ancient fibres. The marshes that remain are protected by the shingle bank, their pools still fresh for now, and sentried with little egrets. Crossing them towards the woods and

rounding a bend in the track, we're brought up short. Against a backdrop of heavy green, a swarm of midday bats is flickering. Blink. Not bats, but swifts. Oh God, in this year of so

few, _so many_ swifts. An aerial feeding frenzy. They're gorging on insects kettled by wet and wind in this one sheltered acre. Hawking, swerving, flick-flacking, turning almost upside

down to flash with paler brown, and circuiting so fast it seems genuinely impossible that they do not collide. It takes them only a couple of minutes to clean up – and the feathered tornado

rises and expands, a few crossbow silhouettes slingshotting over our jaw-dropped heads. Seconds later, they're gone.