Country diary: midwinter has its own discreet beauties

Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd A distant, writhing, black line resolves itself into a low-flying flock of scoter ducks

At the western end of Black Rock Sands, the beach where Roman Polanski filmed the battle scenes in his powerfully unsettling 1971 version of Macbeth, is a dark crag of ancient rock, trap-dyked, quartz-seamed, dripping. In it are the sea-caves that Robert Graves inhabited with the "Things never seen or heard or written about" of his poem Welsh Incident (1929). A dull winter's afternoon intensified their gloom. The bright orange flash of a kingfisher whirred around sombre overhangs until it found shelter among deep shadow. I turned to face seawards.

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