Hope and perseverance

16th May 2025

This morning the clouds to the east looked like thick grey smoke, the residue of a fire in a land far, far away.

The sky became more broken up as we got closer to the beach but there was still greyness and a sharp wind from the east (and the north) that has been with us for a week and more, stirring the waves up into pointed spikes and chilling all on the land.

The wind seems to have become stronger as the week has gone on.

On Wednesday, the water was low. At eight we were a couple of hours after the first low tide and the tidal pull to the south was so strong that it was visible from the beach. It looked as if the sea was racing, running faster and faster as it failed to catch up with itself.

Once in the water, the pull is impossible to ignore. The combination of wind and tide has made the part of sea in which we swim into a salty and entertaining water park. Swim or walk against the tide and you are on a fitness machine. The effort needed to move against the tide or resist it by standing still, is sure to build hefty muscles if nothing else.

On Wednesday there was sun, always encouraging, raising the beach temperature to around eleven degrees. The weather app insisted that it ‘feels like 7’. Yep.

I opted for the fresh water rapids ride and got into the low lagoon between the beach and the sandbank, sank into the water, took my feet off the bottom, leant back into a comfortable small boat shape and within moments was transported, no effort at all, as far as I wanted to be.

Fix fixed, I found my feet and climbed out over the small break at the water’s edge and walked the few hundred yards back to the line of dry clothes.

This morning, when we arrived at the beach, the sun had painted a wide strip of silver along the middle of the sea. By the time I’d crossed the strip of sand to stand at the water’s edge and take a picture, it had gone. There was however what looked like a deep pool of glowing silver far off on the horizon. Far off treasure that no one could reach.

Puck and Bikini had made their way over the wind-wave crashing sandback and were swimming out beyond it as if they were swimming to the silver hoard. No one ever reaches the horizon, the watery rainbow’s end.

This morning, I opted for the rapids ride once more, just as satisfying, not quite as fast. Once more I sat in the sea with my legs up and rode along with the tide, slightly slower, just nudging Mrs Professor Peru who had been invisible to me because I was going backwards and she was standing bobbing and chatting to the welcomed back Canadian.

The low sea had left a wide strip of golden sand between the shoreline and the shingle. The sharp wind had ensured that the sand was quite empty of foot and paw prints. There were interesting stones, if it had been the weather for stone searching.

Higher up the shingle, a sand strip width, perhaps, from the shore, the beach has been transformed by great clumps of sea cabbage bursting into enormous and beautiful bloom. It’s hard to describe just how transformational this is.

Despite having spent a quiet non-swimming day spotting its tiny new shoots, I am always surprised and delighted that it’s come back in such quantity. Given that our gardens are as dry as dust, the sea cabbage plants are easily more than three feet wide and a foot and a half high.

sea cabbage blooms all over the dry shingle

They appear everywhere, great clusters along the shingle as far as the eye can see. I feel overwhelmed by them sometimes and their ability to be bountiful and growing as strongly as they do on salty stones. Hope and perseverance.

Their flowers are surprisingly lovely. Small white confetti blossom with tiny white centres.

Nearer the car park, the gorse is dry. Burnt by the wind. The birds are nowhere today and who can blame them. The fisherman says that there’ll be westerlies next week.