Trails across Selsey Sunsets

Selsey Common is a common place for 'Stroudies' to go see sunsets. It can be blowy, blustery, windswept and wild, and this autumn we've been treated to some significantly beautiful sunset vistas from atop 6000-year-old Toots Long Barrow, looking west across the estuary to Wales.

Here are a few moments from October and November on Selsey...

On clouded-out evenings, the Brome grasses shine more silvery than the iPhone cares to process, cutting dark lanes from people previous to follow.

Running around the five valleys has led me to nerding-out about trails themselves - specifically On Trails by Robert Moor (nominative determinism that may not translate to the US; is moorland a specifically European feature?), and history of trail running see Dirtbag Dreams, which covers the parallel growth of the British and North American phenomenon, including raucous events on Blackheath which had to be broken up by police after fights over the live betting. No such events have yet occurred basic on my outings. You're all missing out.
In On Trails, there's ruminating on paths and trails, and how humans follow paths, leaving trails as evidence of said traversal etc etc.

"Use creates trails. Long-lasting trails, then, must be of use. They persist because they connect one node of desire to another... they both express and fulfil the collective desire, they exist as long as the desire does; once the desire fades, they fade too"

Dog walks have since become a game to work out how people have moved across the space, in turn leading me across it (and hopefully therefore steering clear of inadvertently breaking the Countryside Code, as I hate breaking rules). And when we're all drawn by the same thing; the best view a space offers, these 'desire paths' are created, "historical records – making past patterns of footsteps apparent, and allowing the past to directly inform the present".
On Selsey, we're led to stand atop monuments to and of our ancestors, who provide the perfect spot to see out the remnants of the day, as people have done for millennia before, and hopefully, for millennia from now.
All for the love of some neon pink chem-trails straddling the skies.

All photos from iPhone 17 (base model ✌️) with moods applied using lightroom on iOS.

And whilst not Selsey, there have been a few shots captured either side of sunset from runs in September that are worth a share. Haresfield Beacon and Callowell, specifically. Might have even been captured on same long run. Only the EXIF holds the answer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯