13th May 2024
Just before the first low tide
Monday wakes with summer peeping through high haze. Not a blue sky but a filtered one, sun looking through a gauze curtain pinned to the roof. This somehow gives a colour boost to the fresh crops, shimmering green fields, each with their seed-washed bald patches, legacy of the incessant rain.
Those times of flood feel as if they happened in a different place. The solar event has been kind to us over here in the East, delivering a full weekend of warm bright weather. A stiff sea mist hid the aurora, but on the coast it hides many things.
Today, the beach is fifteen degrees. Not yet lazing-on-a-towel-to-dry weather but no longer a shivering one. The wind is eleven mph from the south south west, with the odd gust around sixteen. The flag is straight out, wet skin wants cover.
From the top of the shingle bank, the sea looks glassy, almost pink under the high cloud sky. A hefty blonde strip of sand at the shore line looks as wide as the shingle above it. Mostly untrammelled, scattered with pebbles still glossy from the water. A tiny lucky stone. Thank you.
There is a handful of silhouettes larking about belond the sand bank. The waves coming over are pretty and frilly and big enough that you don’t want to find yourself underneath one.
The tide is only forty minutes before the first full low tide of the day. There’s still enough depth to stretch your legs down in the lagoon before the sandbank, feet delightedly feeling ripples of sand not shingle.
Today’s water temperature is ten degrees. If you’ve dipped yourself in a winter sea at half that temperature, ten degrees seems almost mild. Not too bad. The summer is in there somewhere.
The not-quite-low tide is strong, pulling south. It’s hard work swimming against it, easier sometimes to ride the sea along and get out on a different part of the beach, adding a short walk to your morning routine. Today, I choose this option.
And then the sun clears the cloud and in a moment drops a whole bucket of silver sprinkles on the high parts of every wave and warms your face even when your body is being cooled by the water.
The Kittiwakes play in the sunshine and slowly build their nests.
