Half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!
Shakespeare, King Lear
The quotation, so said the pamphlet Sophie had plucked from the Tourist Information rack, had been the inspiration for the person who won the contest to name this bit of land, this “hoe,” (a “tongue of land,” according to the pamphlet), made of tailings dug out from the Channel Tunnel. ... An herb known as samphire had once been popular in London, and small boys were lowered over the edge of the cliffs to pluck it from the rocks, after which it was pickled or sent fresh to London tables. “If Shakespeare thought it was dreadful,” Sophie mused half aloud, “it must have been pretty dreadful.”
“Indeed it was,” said a voice behind her.
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