Wednesday 21st May and, for a while, at eight, it seemed as if we were re-born. Baby blue skies cornered with pale white cotton wool puffs.
A gentle, grey glassy sea, breathing smooth cool silver waves, a deep pool of white shining treasure just visible on the far horizon.
At eight am, the beach temperature was around thirteen degrees and the northerly-easterly high pressure system that’s that’s been pestering us for weeks appears finally to have moved on.
Wednesday delivers a gentler, higher tide that pulls slowly to the north for a change.
The early water is deep now, deliciously engulfing and the comfortable slow water movement, restful by comparison with the breezy easts. We let the water do the work now, are carried along by it.
It’s as if we have momentarily neglected the seas natural power.
Swimming feels lovely, wrapped fully by deep water at around eleven and a half degrees. We are so happy for the more relaxed movement, there is a delay in noticing that the tide is not only pulling north, it’s pulling out, further from dry land.
For the first time in a while, I find myself fully feet-out-of-reach having to swim against the pull back to the beach before building in a little walk back to the our line of dry clothes.
And there’s the unmentionable. A fine layer of brown scum on the water. It’s not dreadful. Not sewage, thank god, a thin layer of most likely sandy cliff that’s been knocked off (by machine or by nature) and spread around during last weekends lively weather change.
Swimming through it (while trying to swerve the worst patches) is an irritation. It’s something else that can take your eye off the bigger picture while being eased smoothly out to sea. As if you’ve nodded off only to wake in horror to find that JD Vance is driving.
There is a reality relief, however. Thankfully, I hadn’t overlooked a lifetime of reversing fishing boats, as mentioned in the previous episode.
On Wednesday, the fisherman is coming in, not going out, and he’s heading for the beach bow-first. A very pretty relief
I wasn’t able to be at the beach for the favourite Friday swim, so I thought I’d look back at last year’s episode of around the same time and find out whether there was scum or forward-facing fishing or rather disingenuous pretty little baby blue skies. NOT AT ALL.
I wrote the the following on the 27th May 2024. My guess is that we’d had some rain by then, although it wasn’t mentioned. So far, this spring, away from the water, it feels like we occupy a sand bowl, although there is a prediction for a five mm fall of rain tomorrow.
Last year seems somehow more positive. Climate, culture, a little less weighed down by war?
The beach blooms too
27th May 2024
All that is green is out. Trees are out, hedges are out, grasses are out and crops are out. Each is busy pushing pollen into the wind if something hasn’t buzzed it up first.
Consequently, aside from the delight in the evidence that nature keeps working (the rest of the world having fallen apart), there is not a single person without a runny nose, or slightly sore throat, a wheeze or ahhhh…fully explosive sneeze.
Sea breath is damp and salty. Accidentally swallow a mouthful of sea and you’d likely get at least a sore throat. Sea spray can make you sneeze but it’s different. Salt water heals.
This morning, the sea is molten silver, rippling and frilly, bathed in early morning sunlight. We’re around quarter of an hour past the first full low tide. The sea is ankle deep for half a dozen steps and becomes gradually deeper to the point that it’s chest depth, starts to feel cold (the water is twelve degrees, not yet a bath) and you can drop in and swim about.
I’m walking in with the boatbuilder, having our Monday morning chat. I tell him off for his sunburn and for working through Bank Holidays. I’m in the middle of this when the water fast becomes shallower so that he’s standing waist-deep beside me and I unintentionally knock my knees on the bottom.
The sandbank is wonderfully messy today, with underwater branches of rippled sand that go on and on, as if they would reach the beach and then don’t, so you trip off them and into the water again. They save you from the face-full of frilly little waves that are pouring over the edge of the main sandbank and would otherwise be head height.
On the sandbank and beyond, a dozen bodies chatting through Monday morning. Rupert’s Mum is back, no Puck as he is confined to the beach after being badly dented on his bike.
I walk off the sandbank, swim half a dozen strokes, knock my knees again, stand up and walk. The ripples are large and uneven, tricky to walk on. It feels like participating in an outdoor aqua aerobics class.
The beach is thirteen degrees with a wind of around thirteen mph gusting to nineteen. The flag’s full out and it’s not a day for air-drying wet skin.
Around us, the beach is out too. Great magnificent orbs of sea cabbage, accidental lupins, flowers and grasses so pretty, they deserve close and slow attention.
This morning, away from the world, all is beautiful.






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interesting to compare may 24 and 25, the sea comparison seems positive apart from sandy water seems fine but agree the political outlook far from as positive. appreciated the plant photos as well as the extraordinary little puffs of clouds.