Urros of Liencres

You hear the sea before you see it. The ground runs out, the cliff drops away, and the stacks stand there in the water with the swell working round their feet, changing shape with every set that comes in.

This is a coast people come to photograph, and the light does most of the work: the rocks turn warm at each end of the day and flat in the middle of it. Paths run along the clifftop in both directions, so walk on past the first viewpoint rather than turning round where the cars are — the view opens differently every hundred metres of it.

• Signal: mobile coverage is poor along this coast — save your maps offline before you leave the car.
• Water: there is no drinking water at the cliffs or anywhere within reach of them, so bring what you need.
• Toilets: the nearest toilets, 365 m away, are private rather than public.
• Orientation: an information board stands 216 m from the cliffs, by the parking.
• The edge: nothing here is fenced. Keep well back from it, and keep children and dogs in hand.

The approach is by road, and the last part is always on foot. Cars are left at the parking set back from the coast, and from there the way out to the clifftop crosses open ground with no surfaced path under it — walking shoes rather than sandals.

By bus you get as far as the hospital stops at Liencres, which leaves the rest of the distance to cover on foot. Do that in daylight: the cliffs have no lighting of any kind, and the edge is not somewhere to arrive in the dark.

Best: the first hour of the day and the last hour before sunset.

Avoid: the middle of a bright day, and the clifftop itself while a storm is running.

Low light is what makes the stacks read as stacks — at midday the whole coast goes flat and grey in a photograph. Winter brings the biggest swell of the year and the sea at its most spectacular, but a gale on an unfenced edge is a different proposition from a swell watched from further back, and the weather here comes in off the open water with nothing to slow it.