Would the dam hold? Blustery waves challenged it while sharp blasts of ice-cold wind whistled along its length. Wind turbines whirled but solar panels caught only faint glimmers of the winter sun. A red kite circled majestically on the thermals. I too circled, my eyes scanning the ground. I was hunting for something so still, inert, ancient, that it hadn’t changed for millions of years. Where I stood, a tropical ocean was once swarming with life. In the shallows, trilobites scuttled and burrowed in the mud. Above them swam gelatinous, translucent belemnites which are like our present-day squid. Hard to imagine on this winter day. But the droughts last summer left a larger expanse of shore here, so there was hope, even for our icy fingers, of finding the stony remains of that vanished world. Sifting the gravel, I felt a stubby object, tapering to a point. Lifting it, I observed a glossy brown belemnite. No rainbow colours here or opalescent sheen like the fossils unearthed in Australia, but it was still treasure enough to me. Ten steps on, I reached down to pick up the ridged and rigid exoskeleton of a trilobite. Then the harsh call of the red kite above interrupted my reflections, recalling me to the present. Two hundred million years from now, would the swirling kite have left its stony traces too? John, 10