Monding Gym

Spray salts the grey flagstones white at the very end of the sea wall, where the breakwater widens into an open battle floor with no roof at all. Low stone terraces climb on the landward side, their steps rimmed with dried salt and worn hollow in the middle by long seasons of use. Tall masts stand at each corner of the floor, their long pennants cracking straight out in a wind off the water that never quite drops. Beyond the seaward rail there is only heaving green water, and on rough days waves strike the outer face and throw sheets of it across the floor. Light here is hard and changeable, bright one moment and slate-dark the next as squalls race in off the open sea. Behind, the long breakwater runs back toward brick gables and cranes, and nothing at all shelters this floor from the gale.