The LOW low tide on Bulverhythe Beach

Wednesday last week marked our first full year in St. Leonards-on-Sea.
It doesn’t feel like a year! And yet when I look back so much has happened that yes, indeed, it must have been twelve whole months since we first landed here.

There are so many things I love about this place that I scarcely know where to start.

But maybe I could begin with how the sea rearranges the beach with each tide: how, every day, this place is a different place.

At no point do I appreciate this magical aspect of our beach more than during a LOW low tide. It’s so exciting to see how the sea has silted things up differently, moved rocks and branches around, reshaped the slopes of the sand, and made new rivers and pools. Somehow the sea’s work looks at its finest when the tide has gone right out and you can see it all, shining and wet and new. The same but different, every time.

Living here, you get to learn about the moon and its rhythms, and how they impact the sea. It’s quite flat; there is a steep shelf of shingle followed by a gradual slope of silty sand. The gentle rate of incline means that a drop of a few centimetres in the level of the tide reveals quite a few metres of sand. During spring tides at full or new moon, the low tides are more dramatic than at other points in the lunar cycle. But there are a few extra special spring tides during which the sea level drops to below .8m. This is very exciting because then you can see…

1. the site of the 1749 shipwreck, The Amsterdam…

…and 2. the remains of the 4,000 year old forest that once grew in the spot that is now Bulverhythe Beach.

At the LOW low tide, a huge swathe of sand and ancient forest floor is laid bare for a few precious hours. The unveiled landscape feels vast, mysterious and fleeting.

The wet sand is like a mirror. The weather rolls in off the waves. And here and there, you find an ancient tree trunk or tree stump lying on the ground like a bone.

I read in a book that if I am very, very lucky, I might find a 4,000 year old hazelnut or acorn on the beach (no luck yet).

It’s amazing to imagine that 4,000 years ago, the place where we walk every day was woodland. The wood is not fossilised, but more sort of pickled by the salt water. It’s soft and crumbling, slowly giving up its nutrients to the brine of the sea. You find branches and tree-stumps that feel slippery and spongy, interspersed with silty pools of mud. The decaying wood makes an ideal home for burrowing shellfish like Piddocks, and now functions as a living ocean floor that still remembers being a forest. The lines and patterns on shells merge with the lines and patterns of wood, all of it brought together by the waves.

The result is an unexpected assemblage of branches and barnacles; roots and mussels; clams and tree trunks.

All of it feels mysterious to me as I’m still learning how to understand and read this place. For example: who makes these neat little donuts of mud? Have they been expelled from the burrows of the piddocks?

Because I’m me, I find myself wondering how – if – I would knit something inspired by this. The palette of browns and greys, of sandy golds and dusty off-whites reminds me of the colours of sheep. Colours that sing of nature’s own processes, of the living world, of the biology of things and the natural processes through which things come into being.

As you can probably tell, I love it here very much – but especially at the LOW low tide.

Yesterday evening at dusk and early this morning, the tide was lovely and low (.4m and .6m, respectively) and I went down in the blustery wind to see if I could try and capture some of the magic to share with you.

It’s so hard to put all the space – that is such a part of the feeling of the ocean at low tide – into a flat 2D picture, but I hope you can get a sense of it, even so.

Tonight after 9pm it’s going to be .3m which is totally amazing but it will be too dark, I fear, for taking any pictures.
I might go anyway.

yours in the LOW low tides,
Fx