How many beautiful days this Summer? And what an elongated Summer because of lockdown. Even at the start in early April the weather was warm and barmy. It’s added to the surreal nature of the whole situation.
Today is no exception. It’s warm and cloudless but there is a constant breeze that refuses to allow the day to become too hot, a relief for those walking abroad as I am.
One morning a few years ago I woke early, between 5 and 6, and drove through quiet, deserted lanes to Covehithe and from there walked to Southwold for breakfast and then back again. A blissful, carefree Summer morning near the start of the school holidays. Unplanned. No expectations. These are often the occasions which seem to create some of the most intense memories.
This is a favourite stretch of coastline for me, like Thorpeness and Aldeburgh, redolent of happy memories of Summer. I think 3 Summers ago I was suddenly into being up early and seeing the day start (just as this Summer I have been into sleeping out under the stars).
You’d have to be a very early riser to avoid the sort of crowds that have been descending on the East Coast this Summer holidays. I don’t blame them. One blessing that could be taken from Dad declining and then dying during lockdown was that we felt we were able to bend the rules a little.
Today I park in the car park next to the pier. It’s only 10 am and the breeze makes me tingle like a seaside kiss. Why hasn’t someone written a book about winds? The different winds on earth and their impact. From the roaring forties to desert sand storms to tropical hurricanes. That would be a good read.
The path immediately heads away from the sea across Reydon Marshes. Southwold soon becomes a small cluster of shapes on the Southern horizon, its white lighthouse protruding above its houses. I normally think of lighthouses on remote promontories but love the fact that in Southwold it’s right in the middle of the town cosied up to the houses, pubs and Adnams brewery.
Another transition. Places appear, enfold me then retreat into the distance. The process of moving through time.
I remember the lovely red and white bath toy lighthouse on Orford Ness. During those grey Suffolk days over the Winter when I walked to take a break from looking after Pa it was a marker. Something to head towards as I headed North. It had stood there for 228 years. Yet last month it got dismantled. Block by block. And the last time I saw it only the base was standing.
‘Nothing beside remains’.
I’ve stopped seeing Dad in the world around me now. I often talk to him as I walk and I revisit memories of him. It’s amazing how we just move on. I thought I would be changed forever. I was wrong.
After passing the red brick houses of Reydon I have that wonderful realisation of leaving a town and gradually being absorbed back into the countryside. I arrive at the fabulously named Smear which as far as I can tell is no more than a few houses built on a bend in the road. A smear of houses?
Later with Mum we get out the Oxford Dictionary of Place Names. We can find nothing under Smear although there is a record of Easton Bavents, the crumbling low sand cliffs, much loved by sand martins that line the beach just North of Southwold. Bavent was the name of the local – probably Norman – landowner I think in the 13th Century.
From Smear I start zigzagging cross country North a bit, then East a bit, as always delighted by a sudden turn in the land or view that I’ve never seen before. A rare gift when most other people are screaming past in their packed 4 X 4s oblivious to these hidden gems always waiting to be discovered.
The path meets the Southwold to Wrentham road and I head North – always North – feeling the heat off the tarmac and the breeze in my face.
From the road I am relieved to get onto a track, marked as a bridleway and not the designated path (the rough walks path across the marshes is closed). I am behind Easton Wood that borders the sea. I think of the book I’m reading on Coleridge and his extraordinary relationship with nature. He believed in a harmonious relationship between God, nature and human beings. Perhaps it seems far-fetched or fanciful yet there is something transcendent about the impact of nature.
I often wonder if I feel this more intensely than most. I’m not sure if others are so moved by the sun filtering through the leaves of a beech or the feel of wind and sun on skin or the smell of sea after time away from her or the sound of waves. These moments – never predicted or expected – seem sometimes to be more joyous than anything else I’ve known.
I stop for one of these moments and float amongst some old oak trees along the way. One is just a hollow shell, its wizened fork and the main trunk the only remnants of this once vast and great thing. Small cobwebs flap and shine in the wind at its extremes like a pennant on an old ship.
This moment is beyond words in its experience. Something like the experience of ‘feeling’ the natural world when in the group of a strong hallucinogenic. I start to imagine that there is an unspoken communication, something ancient, that is beyond language in the way we connect with the world around us. Is this what shamanism does?
Nearby a whole avenue of trees flank a track to the sea like a grand avenue leading up to a stately home. I think they are beeches. Their leaves are fluttering, quietly whispering, undulating like the distant sound of waves. Like the earth’s breath. I stop and listen and breathe and listen again. Absorbed. Absent from normality.
A track reaches a road and the road leads straight to the coast. I am getting close to Covehithe. This has always been the place to come for remote Suffolk seaside. There are barely any houses here, only the dilapidated walls of the old abbey within which the new, smaller church nestles. It won’t be too long before the sea will reach those walls and it’ll cave into the sea like at Dunwich. According to Wikipedia ‘Covehithe has the highest rate of erosion in the UK’.
There are two things I always remember about Covehithe: there are always tree trunks washed up on the beach, some half buried in the sand and many smoothed and sculpted by the tides. I know of no other beach which has this.
The second is the road that runs straight to Covehithe. In fact there are two – both straight lines – that meet in a fork just before the church. The road then continues straight towards the cliff and the road literally disappears off the cliff. I’m sure I remember at some point you could still see the lines that run down the middle reach the cliff. Where did that road go? To see it now it’s nothing more than an overgrown path but the tarmac is still there.
This is where I leave the path for today but I have the long walk back along the beach to Southwold to get back to my car. It is my birthday celebration tonight at The Ramsholt Arms. It’s the first time Mum will have been out for a meal unaccompanied by Dad. It’ll be emotional but also a step in the right direction.
The heat and haze remind me of another continent. It doesn’t look or feel English. The beach here is so wild it seems in my mind’s eye like a fantastical desert.
Again I feel myself getting truly lost here. Sky. Sand. Wind. Sun. All thoughts disappear. And only feelings exist in a timeless place. And then the thought of a swim brings me back to a sort of reality. The thought takes me from one dream and makes me deliberately dive into another.
Halfway between Covehithe and Southwold I spot a young seal pup still covered in white fur. Flopping towards the water. I remember 2 years ago finding one similar to this at Covehithe and trying to force it into the water but it wouldn’t have any of it.
This one makes it into the breaking waves and plunged under and I see its domed head pop up about 100 yards out looking back to shore and towards me.
‘Yes’, I say to myself ignorantly. A few minutes later it has swum back onto the beach a bit further back from where it had taken off. And it flops back onto the sand looking bewildered. Deserted.
Do their mothers abandon them? It seems seal pups like this are unable to fend for themselves. Who knows what will happen to it? I leave nature to take its course and head to Southwold to a packed car park and the hordes of holidaymakers.
The Slow Walker 