Quicksand and crafty currents

11th October 2024

Three degrees in the car. A windscreen glazed with not-quite ice. Not nearly ready.

The trees are still mostly holding on to their leaves but they, and all the air around them and beyond are now flooded in gloriously golden autumn light. We’re part of a film set and the blondes are set to drench everything in gold.

The sun is lower, the air is clear. At eight am, we’re chasing the on-fire sunrise just after seven. The sun hasn’t really finished hauling itself out of bed but it’s there, golden faced, glowing as if from a good night’s sleep.

It’s as if we’ve changed state, nature has decided that we should have a positive outlook, all that immediately surrounds us is bathed in beauty. A micro space in which our heads turn away from horror, just for a moment.

The green leaves being held on to by their trees seem enhanced. Ploughed fields have highlighted lines, gentle shadows in every indent.

So far, we’re undisturbed by hurricanes, despite dire warnings.

Then there is the sea. Imagine wisps of steam floating from the high point of each glossy wave, the first sign that the water is now warmer than the air.

It looks like an enchanted seascape, as magical as a mist-covered lake that hides a long lost royal sword. At this stage, the sun appears as a reflection rather than something that’s shining on the sea. The water, between the mist is high gloss, shining gunmetal, rippling gently.

In reality it’s a beautiful entrapment, as if the sea wants to be looked at rather than invaded by a very mixed bunch of year-round sea swimmers who ruffle the water and make footmarks in the shoreline.

‘Watch out for the quicksand!’ It’s super-soft and saturated sand around a metre out from the shoreline, half visible from the beach, the further half under the very fine part of the incoming wave.

Some of it’s soft enough for your foot to immediately disappear. Other patches feel firmer. Step on them with your leading foot, confident of a firm foothold as you move carefully through the shoreline and into the sea. Add your weight and you notice a slow and measured sinking.

The answer is to propel yourself forward, over the sand and into the sea because if there’s one certainty in the world of sea swimming, it’s that the water will hold you up. Eventually that’s what I did.

Before I swim, I thought, I’ll try and get some pictures that capture the enchanted steaming of the early morning sea. The steaming doesn’t last long. If there’s sun, it soon warms the air above the sea enough to increase air temperature and the steam will stop.

I’m in my swimming gear standing at the shoreline aware of my own quickly sinking feet. I try and hold my phone still enough to capture the enchantment (I don’t really manage to capture it).

Alongside the main photo that I use to illustrate this blog, I take a short video, not quite thirty seconds, to put on Instagram. If you use the app, you’ll find the videos under North Sea Fan Club. One of the most interesting things about them is the way that they illustrate the seasonal changes in North Sea and the skies behind it.

I’m ankle-deep, taking the video when the Boatbuilder wanders over to support me. We have a short interchange and if you use Insta, you’ll hear that I haven’t edited it out.

‘I’ll just grab the phone then?’ says he.

‘Please, grab the phone, step over me if you need.’

I finished the video, clumsily lifted my feet out of the gloop and took my phone with its camera back to my heap of dry clothes and zipped it safely in a pocket before heading back towards the sea, running quickly over the offending sand and into the water.

‘Watch out for the current - there’s quite a pull.’ That was the second warning, the North Sea’s other way of demonstrating its irritation with invaders.

The water is just over fifteen degrees now, temperature churned by the recent storm. Without the bad weather, I’d have expected something a little gentler in early October. It’s not yet problem cold, in fact, if you’re sufficiently distracted by quicksand and current, you hardly notice it all.

I’m scratching my neoprene socks on the light shingle underfoot and looking up at the sun and jumping incoming waves. It’s delightful, a re-set for body and mind.

However, I’m not paying sufficient attention and a moment later, I’m dragged by the northerly current to the point at which I’m just a metre away from the fisherman’s lines.

They are not dangerous but they feel precarious, they’re old lines, covered in tar, slithery to the foot, paired so that they feel as if you could get your legs tangled between them. To be avoided if you can.

I abandon the sea, moving through the shoreline waves and the soft shoreline sand on my knees but in a planned risk-aversion way.

The kittiwake nests have gone now. The gulls sit and ride the water where they can.

If you know someone who you think would enjoy reading this blog, please send it to them. The share button above is an easy way of doing it.