Saturday, 11 October 2008

A walk on the beach


I take my dog for a walk on the beach nearly every day. Every day that weather allows anyway. Today was a beautiful day, the weather was really warm for October and it was really warm. The sun shone straight accross the sea, above the offshore windfarm on to the beach, so brightly it was blinding.

A walk on the beach always calms me down and makes me aware of the awesome power and beauty of nature. Somedays there is just me and the dog and it feels wonderful. Most mornings I meet a growing number of people who walk on the beach daily, some with their dogs, others just for the exercise, people like Neville, and Busters dad, the lady who always wears a coat even when it is sunny, the man with the equally barking dog, Colin, Ben's dad, the lady with the elderly golden labrador who always calmly ignores my dog and keeps plodding on.

Today as I was walking along I suddenly got a really strong smell of smoke. There was no smoke, just an incredibly strong odor. It felt so out of place, like it shouldn't be there, it shouldn't be poluting this wonderful sea air. And where did it come from. I guessed, correctly as it happens, that it came from the cliff top (dune top) but it was so strange to have such a strong smell with no smoke. You really can have the smell of fire with out the smoke.

And it made me a bit angry - I didn't want it to be there - I didn't want this human smell to be poluting my seaside, my sea smelling shore with the cleansing air and powering tides.

When I walked up the cliff to make my way home I found the source of the smell, builders clearing a derelict house that will be better cleared and tidied but even this did not make me glad to have fire smokey smells on my beach.

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