Moderate and mild away from the coast (7)
I believe the answer is:
midland
'moderate' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives. Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'mild away from the coast' is the wordplay.
'away' indicates an anagram (letters move away from their original places).
'from' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'the coast' becomes 'and' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'mild' is an anagram of 'midl'.
'midl'+'and'='MIDLAND'
'and' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for midland that I've seen before include "Birmingham, perhaps" , "In the centre of a country" , "In a country's central part" .)