England: Luke Williams (A New Experience)

Program: London School of Economics, Year

A couple of Saturdays ago, on what might have been the last sunny day of the year, a few of my friends and I took the train from London down to the Seven Sisters in Sussex. What awaited us when we dragged ourselves out of the station at Seaford was exciting enough to warrant our 6 AM call time:  a 14-mile-long hike along the rolling chalk cliffs of England’s southeastern coast. The air was crisp and the sun still low in the sky, and a fierce breeze wrecked our hair before we even made it to the trailhead, but it wasn’t anything that a cup of vending machine coffee (and my training in the Wisconsin winters) couldn’t handle.

Pictured left: The view looking over Seaford, where we started our journey.

As we made our way across the cliffs, what had initially been a decent throng of people quickly thinned out, leaving the four of us alone with the faint sound of waves crashing against the rocks below and the occasional screech of a seagull above us. After two months of running around the city with a schedule full of schoolwork and activities, it was nice to physically take a step back and soak in the outdoors. It was nice to hike, it was nice to laugh, and it was nice to sit silently on the grass looking out over the ocean in our little moment in the sun.

Pictured right: The view of the Seven Sisters from the beginning of our hike.