A twice-my-height wave rolls towards me
16th October 2023
There is a chill in the air and on the beach the air is chill. Six degrees on the shingle, cooled by a stiff north-westerly breeze.
Trouble is, if this morning’s temperature wasn’t trouble enough, we have been lulled into a false sense of mild, golden autumn with warm air blown in and frequently landing at nineteen degrees or thereabouts, straight from the Canaries.
It leads us to tell ourselves that the turn into winter really isn’t that bad. ‘I’ll barely notice, the water temperature will drop, of course, but it takes ages and in the meantime, we’ll be comfortably chatting away on the beach. Bobble hats on.’
This morning called in the first frost for east Suffolk. Hedgerows were dull aside from the occasional sinister ragwort and, closer to the beach, the last gasp of gorse. There are a few small Christmas-card meadows, uneven, unploughed, shaded by trees and looking as if they have been scattered with finely-sieved icing sugar, catching every bent twig and spider web.
The sea is staggeringly beautiful, covered by high cloud over a brushed-blue aluminium sky with the filtered sun creating a wide path of silver back to the horizon. It is like a summer view, modified for winter. Low tide had been just after six am, so by eight, we have a comfortable depth in which to swim.
Between shingle and shoreline is a broad, mostly undisturbed border of fresh sand, today populated in one patch, in front of the fishing boat launch place, by a large and various collection of gulls, waiting for the fisherman to fetch their breakfast.
There are only four of us swimming. Cold weather numbers, it feels somehow more like it used to. Rupert’s Mum opts to watch and the boatbuilder joins late, making five in the water.
The waves are beautiful but intimidating. The sea is mostly flat and, without warning a twice-my-height rolling wave runs towards me and all my focus is is timing my jump. We jump it and anticipate that there will be another flat spell and then another huge roller and another and one more. We make them all but it takes the sort of concentration that happily distracts one from the rest of the world. It’s a work out too.
It is a powerful distraction, I consciously breath when I’m getting in today. Although the water isn’t particularly cold, we still have sixteen degrees, the cold air above makes it feel like winter. I need a deep breath when I sink into the water, another deep breath when I’m faced with the fast-aproaching wall of wave, a lung-full to ensure that I have the energy to jump over, and one just in case I don’t make the jump and get washed over, in which case the last thing you want is to feel breathless.
Back on the beach I attempt super-fast changing so that my damp skin has minimal contact with the breeze. My hands are quickly too cold to get my swimming socks off efficiently and I’m clumsy getting dressed. A wake up for winter. Worth every moment.
