I grew up very near this beautiful sandy beach. Most of the time it’s just a huge vista of golden sands, from the tufted sand dunes out as far as the eye can see.
You can always hear the crashing of the distant waves and see the white top rollers. Occasionally, when luck is on your side, the tide will actually be in and you can paddle along as it creeps up the beach, almost silently lapping with the swell. Surrounding small sandbanks in its wake then covering them with just an inch or two of water before swallowing them whole in its march up to the high tide point.
When I was young and sick with a cold, my mum would bring me here on her day off. The sea air (everyone said) a cure for all that ails you. And it always felt like a magical tonic to breathe in that salty sharpness, even in winter. Especially in winter, when there was no one there but you and the gulls, and mum. She’d walk along the more compact sand as I darted left and right to see what the last tide had brought, breathing deeply and feeling clearer and more alive than at any other time.
Winds would often whip our hair about and if it was trying to rain then (as the saying goes) we wouldn’t melt, especially as there wasn’t a chance of keeping a hood in place! Returning to the car always meant hopping around on one foot whilst we would pour sand from our shoes before climbing into protectiveness away from the howling wind.
Summer meant you did exactly the same, only barefoot (you don’t go barefoot along a beach in the middle of winter, not here!) And you could dig your toes into some warm sand, mindful of shells, seaweed and other things that the tide may have abandoned in your path.
On many days in summer we’d walk from home through the woods and across the dunes on public footpaths. So few seemed to know they existed, and you could watch red squirrels and rabbits if you were looking.
There was always that joy of clambering over the last dune, having already glimpsed the promise of the sea in the distance and then seeing whether or not the tide was in or out as you crested the top, before turning along the beach and following the route to the entrance and the promise of an ice cream.
I wish I could be there, inhaling that wonderful sea air, that magic cure-all, the cries of the gulls and the crashing of the waves, reminding me of the carefree childhood long past but never forgotten.
