Early morning walk

A collared dove, chest puffed out and pink, coos on a sycamore branch above as I stride down the hill to the Promenade. Roz Cran has been inspired by the Dawn Walk essays on Radio 3 and the book ‘Wanderlust’ by Rebecca Solnit, to set out early and walk from St. Leonards on Sea to Bexhill. 

Golden light from the sun gives way to light grey cloud. I choose a grey pebble to accompany me and start my morning walk towards West St. Leonards.

There is so much to see, so much to hear at this early time. Seagulls glide and skitter in the air currents.  Starlings peck.  Sparrows squeak.  Crows jump up and down on the pebbles – are they catching worms or flies?

One of the boons of walking is feeling connected to your surroundings. I feel grounded, even on the concrete.  As I clamber over the shingle onto the sands, more so.  I see my prints in the sand and think of the artist Richard Long and his muddy foot and hand print circles on gallery walls recalling his walks.

I had checked the tide before leaving, low at 8.53 or 9.24am depending which website you look at.  And the sea is receding and pulling lower each minute to reveal huge stretches of sand at Bulverhythe.

 

 

A boy of about 12 or 13 years is spreading something over the sand, a net with white plastic balls.  I approach and ask what he is doing.

“Catching flatties,”

“What are they?”

“Plaice I think,”.

“Do you eat them?”

“Yes I fry them.”

 

 

A row of wooden sticks poke up in the sea, I realise it’s the Amsterdam, the Dutch East India Company ship that ran aground in 1749 during a storm,  bound from the Netherlands to Java, the first time I have seen it.   The wood has been preserved in the salty water.  As has the forest of 4,000 years ago – you step over petrified boles, branches and trunks as you walk over these sands.  Memories of childhood surface:  bumbling over Sussex fields and paddling in the River Mole, jamjars of tiddlers. The words of “The Happy Wanderer” come into my mind, a German song taught to me in Infant School, surprisingly soon after the Second World War.  I wander over the mussel beds on the rocks, mooch around the huge stone slabs laid to preserve the path and cycle way and the land from erosion.  Looking back the sea is further out and the remains of the ship stand clear in the sand, the shape of the hull outlined, stranded.

Marching up and over the crumbly hill to Glyne Gap I see the beach café is closed, no fry up breakfast today.  It’s croissant and coffee from M&S and a welcome break sitting on the pebbles.  Time to watch the glittering sea, to fiddle with the stones and shells, select a couple to take home.

 

 

Onwards up Galley Hill where once stood Martello Tower no. 44 built in 1808 to keep out Napoleon but which erosion eventually destroyed in 1868. A vantage point to stare over the sea towards the Baie of Somme.  Or sit on the bench and take your time.  Or peruse the Orientation Plaque installed by the Rotary Club ‘for the interest and pleasure of those who pass this way’.  What a marvellous dial – it points all over the world, to Brighton, Lizard Point in Cornwall, to Brasilia, and Lima in Peru.  A global stretching of thought and wonder.

 

 

Now on the home strait down to Bexhill and the white beach huts, each with its own veranda, little summer homes, some newly painted, others decaying after years of battering from sea and wind.

The sunlight is weaker now, filtered through thin cloud, and warms my skin. I complete the walk, pleased with myself, I have exercised my body and my mind. I have slowed down.  It has taken 3 hours to tramp the few miles. I have had an adventure, a holiday (a holy day even). The early morning time was the most luxurious, few people about, sunshine, wide swathes of sand, open space, open time to look and think.  Time to connect with sand and water and air and wood, memories, thoughts. Time to gaze over the sea towards other lands. Time to idle. Next time I will go earlier.

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