Pallet Town

A tiny seaside hamlet of no more than a handful of buildings, set on a shelf of mown grass above the water. Two square white houses with steep terracotta roofs stand apart from one another, each with a low picket fence and a small kitchen garden of turned earth and staked tomato vines. A larger low laboratory building dominates the western side, its pale walls broken by a long band of glass and a shallow domed roof of oxidised copper. A slender white wind turbine turns slowly on the ridge behind it. Dirt tracks worn pale by use link the buildings and run north between beds of red and yellow flowers. To the south the grass gives way to a short sandy beach and a wooden jetty reaching into calm blue-green shallows. Rounded green hills close the view east and west, dotted with single broad-crowned trees. The whole settlement is small enough to cross in a minute, and the sea haze softens everything beyond it.