Monday 14 August 2023: On the beach

Monday 14 August 2023: On the beach

I am a little confused. The UK government keeps saying that UK beaches are the cleanest in the galaxy, and probably the universe. On the other hand, I read that dozens of triathletes taking part in an international sports contest in Sunderland became seriously ill with e-coli infection as a result of sewage in the water beside Roker beach. This is from *The Guardian* on 5 August 2023: "At least 57 people fell ill with sickness and diarrhoea after competing in sea swimming events at the World Triathlon Championship Series in Sunderland, health officials confirmed this weekend." Northumbrian Water denied any responsibility for this. Surfers against Sewage have marked the beach (also Northumbrian Water) closest to where I used to live in Durham as experiencing "an incident alert". St. Mary's Bay, a beach close to where I live now, with a wheelchair accessible promenade (whereas close-by Dungeness is sadly not wheelchair accessible), has a "poor annual classification" courtesy of Southern Water. One of the beaches of which I have a very warm memory is that at Lyme Regis, Dorset (South West Water) also has an incident alert.

The year was probably 1981. My wife's parents were still alive, and lived in Gloucestershire on the edge of the Cotswolds. It was the summer, and my fiancée and I were visiting her parents. The weather was lovely, so it was decided to visit the south coast for the day. Whilst everyone else I knew had encountered Lyme Regis in the 1817 novel 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen, my familiarity with the place was only through John Fowles 1969 novel 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'. (The movie of the same name, starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, was released about six weeks after my visit.) I was keen to visit. On arrival, the beach was so inviting that I dashed from the car, ripping off my clothes and dived straight into the water. (No, it was not a naturist beach: anticipating a swim in the sea, I had already changed into my bathing trunks.) The water was lovely and warm, and I knew little in those days about sewage on beaches. The memory has the feel of childish innocence, even though I was then some years into my twenties.

The good memory beach of my childhood was at Abersoch in North Wales, where my brother and I attended school camp during two summer holidays. Apart from us, the beach was empty day after day. In contrast, the nearest beaches to Chester, where I grew up, were at Prestatyn and Rhyl, which were miserable (although that might have had something to do with my mother), and New Brighton, opposite Liverpool, which was always filthy. However, my earliest beach memory is also one of my earliest memories, probably from 1961, when, for reasons about which I know nothing, my mother, and possibly her mother-in-law (with whom we lived in Willesden, north-west London) took my brother and me to St. Mary's Bay (see above). Whilst the exciting part of the memory is that I got a soot smut in my eye as a result of leaning out of the carriage in which we were riding on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, the more contemplative part of the memory is of seeing layers of grey altostratus clouds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altostratus_cloud) reflected silently in the sheets of wet sand on the beach.

When I lived in north eastern England, we would visit crowded Whitley Bay from time to time, often walking along the promenade as far as St. Mary's Lighthouse, stopping off at the Rendezvous Café, a wonderful 1950s flashback, at Monkseaton. Occasionally I would walk all the way from Tynemouth, via Cullercoats. However, I would never consider going in the water, both because of its temperature and also the obvious pollution. In some contrast, the deserted beaches further north in Northumberland were much cleaner and empty of people. My favourite place was Lindisfarne, which I visited from time to time for the sheer love of the place. Flocks of eider ducks would swim together just off the coast. On one occasion, as the afternoon and later dusk drew on, I walked around the entire island in the snow; the sea, sand and snow all merging into each other and becoming indistinguishable in the crepuscular gloom.

For many years my brother lived in Menton, south-eastern France, and worked in Monaco. One sunny, gorgeously warm, Friday afternoon, when I had just arrived to visit him, I was sitting on the beach at Menton, sand trickling between my toes, and telephoned my office (in Durham) before close of business for the week. I discovered (not to any great surprise, it has to be admitted) that the weather in Durham was cold and wet. The next day, I swam among the fish off Larvotto beach in Monte Carlo. On a different occasion, when I was Interrailing, my wife and I swam with the fish off the beach at Salobreña in Andalucía (south of Granada, between Malaga and Almeria). However, the most singular occasion was at Easter 1977 when I visited Sicily with my father (he fiddled his work travel expenses, and took me with him on a business trip). He had meetings on the island of Lipari, arranging the import of pumice, I think), but I alighted the ferry at the tiny island of Vulcano (a real volcano almost to myself). Beside the coast were extremely pungent, sulphurous, geothermal mud pools. In the adjacent sea, which although the Mediterranean (images of golden sand in full sunshine), was still quite cool because it was only Easter, geothermally heated water welled and bubbled up. I swam between alternately very cool and very warm water.

I have visited many other coasts, including beaches, around the entire British Isles as well as in continental Europe and North America, and have many more stories to relate. I cannot recall ever having found a notable object on a beach, and rock pools hold my interest for only a relatively short time. Mostly my interest is in walking. I realise from writing this that I like beaches best when they are deserted.