Rabbits

Rabbits are a recurring presence in the coast path narrative, moving between memory, hunger, and the changing land. On The Rumps they crowd close to Ray and Moth’s tent when the couple have almost nothing to eat; elsewhere, the account recalls a past in which rabbits were hunted and used as food, and describes animals and warrens caught up in coastal erosion and a major landslip. They are not individualized characters, but their abundance and vulnerability make them part of the journey’s material reality: food is scarce for the walkers, while the ground beneath the Rabbits is itself unstable.

Food, memory, and hunger

The narrator remembers hunting Rabbits with her father when they ate through fields of corn, damaging a year’s crop in a week. The family shot hundreds, filled the freezer, sold some to butchers, and turned the rest into a long succession of meals, including stews, pies, skewers, pâtés, soups, and sandwiches. That history makes hunting seem familiar rather than unthinkable when hunger returns on the walk.

At a campsite on The Rumps, the couple eat their last pack of noodles and have water but no food. The narrator considers making a snare, drawing on that earlier experience, but has too little energy and not enough gas to cook a Rabbit even if she caught one. The thought remains an unrealized possibility: hunger recalls the old practical knowledge, while present exhaustion and limited supplies prevent it from becoming action.

The overnight encounter on The Rumps

The tent is hidden behind grassy mounds of ancient earthworks on an active Rabbit warren. The following morning, holes are everywhere and fresh droppings have accumulated beneath the flysheet. As Ray opens the tent, tens of fat Rabbits hop only a few feet away, close enough to be taken and put straight into the pot. Instead, the couple make tea. Moth finds a hairy wine gum in his pocket, and they cut it in half.

The scene turns scarcity into a sharp contrast: the couple have no food, yet are surrounded by animals that could provide a meal. Their proximity does not resolve the shortage. The Rabbits remain outside the tent and the couple make do with tea and a shared sweet, leaving the encounter suspended between the remembered practicality of hunting and the immediate choice not to take one.

A habitat shaped by the coast

Looking back at The Rumps as they leave, the walkers see that landfalls have exposed the Rabbit runs. The warren’s passages emerge from the earth and end in mid-air above a great open cave. The narrator wonders how many Rabbits have fallen into the sea and whether the pounding surf will eventually warn the rest to move. The animals are thus present not only as possible food but as inhabitants whose shelter is being dismantled by the coast.

The account also places Rabbits within a much larger episode of geological change. On Christmas Eve 1839, eight million tonnes of soil slipped toward the sea, creating the Undercliff; Rabbits, along with sheep, a tea room, and an area known as goat island, were carried away. The landslip later naturalized into a dense, seven-mile stretch of ferns, ivy, and trees, while the path through it took the walkers eight miles before they emerged. Across these scenes, the Rabbits’ fortunes are tied to land that offers food and shelter but can also collapse, erode, and carry its inhabitants toward the sea.