Distant hills

Across the bay from Southbourne beach I watched as the Purbeck Hills were slowly enveloped by and disappeared in to misty clouds this morning, as over the horizon poor weather moved in. Those distant hills across the bay mean so much to me, they hold so many memories, and as such are imbued with a certain magic that never dulls or fades. It felt quite cinematic, all you needed was a suitably menacing soundtrack as the clouds approached. A visual metaphor of the storm engulfing us all...maybe. 

Ironclad Canute

This morning an ironclad mechanized Canute lumbered back and forth across the Southbourne sands engaged in man's timeless battle with nature and her elements. I've lived locally since I was four, and have seen man endlessly struggle to control of the intertidal, to stop the cliffs and sea being reunited. Periodically a huge and expensive campaign is waged, pumping sand from out in the bay on to the beach, building ever stronger, larger groynes to mitigate long shore drift, and building defences of rock and bolder filled gabion. It only serves to slow the inevitable. Every year the ironclad mechanized Canutes work tirelessly through the stormy months keeping the sand where man wants it, on the beach, a buffer between land and sea. Of course it's futile, nature has the upper hand, it's her playing field and the sand will soon be stripped. I wonder if the dinosaurs though they were all that, before they found them selves extinct that is. 

The Bay

As we walked along the Beach towards the Head the weather was in flux, changing from a wet leaden sky to what would become a near clear blue sky. The waters of the bay were choppy, all white crested and foamy, the waves crashing relentlessly upon the sands, sands which after recent storms still concealed most of the promenade, with lines of blown dunes clustering along the under-cliff.  It was a strange walk, it felt like we'd started it in winter and finished it in spring, quite a transformation in an hour, both in weather and temperature. Geoff loved our walk today, he does love a sandy beach and there were so many other dogs out.