Kimmeridge Bay

Kimmeridge Bay, between Swanage and Weymouth, is one of my favourite places. I came here first when I was three years old and regularly thereafter as a child. Amazingly, it has changed almost not at all in the intervening years. It may not be to everyone's taste - it is a beach of flat, dark grey shale rock - no sand or even shingle so it's not a beach for building sandcastles. You can't swim easily here either because the rock shelves so gradually and so far out. There are no amusements, no cafés, no sophisticated facilities. It is just itself. But what a delight! The shallow, sloping shale that uncovers gradually as the tide goes out is full of rock pools and hidden crevices. The rocks warm easily in the sun and so the water that lazily laps a few centimetres over them is warm too. Very different from the chilly waves a few miles round the coast. Softened by the buffering effect of the rock that stretches out from the shore the waves here are gentle and lazy, their energy and force spent before they reach the limpets and sea anemones that await them. The only hazard is the slipperiness of the rocks when wet, which is considerable and while aged three this didn't bother me in the slightest, in my forties, I am slightly more circumspect about how and where I plant my feet! How did we manage before Crocs came along?! Answer: those jelly sandals or flip flops but I was never allowed these as a child. My mother disapproved of plastic shoes I think, along with other forbidden delights such as lilos, one of which I longed for every year in vain! 

Less beach combing finds today because most of what we encountered was alive! Big blobs of sleepy, dark red jelly - dormant sea anemones, repletely content and waiting for the tide to turn; limpets everywhere drying their shells in the sunshine, clinging immutably to their chosen spot - did you know limpets are homing creatures? When the tide is in and they get on the move, apparently they always return to the same spot.  Iridescent pearl-and-purple top shells with their inhabitants drowsing in the warm water; bright yellow periwinkles following suit; small dark green crabs scuttling busily in the clefts of the rocks between the shade and the sun; snake-lock anemones with their luminous green Medusa tresses, tipped with violet, waving in the water of the rock pools still under the outgoing tide, accompanied by their slightly less exotic, ruby-coloured cousins; tiny, pale, translucent shrimps darting among the seaweed, easier to spot by their shadows through the clear water than themselves.

And above the bay you can walk up onto the headland along a narrow path with the sea as blue as the Mediterranean on one side and the scents of English wildflowers mingling with that characteristic sea-scent of salt, seaweed and the wind that blows off the ocean surrounding you. Bliss!

Not sophisticated or complicated or perhaps everyone's cup of tea but I found it bliss and despite the notorious difficulty of appealing to teenagers without the aid of electronic devices so did H. We will return all too soon to normal routines and the complicatedness that besets everyday life, but for these few days it is good to dispense with them. 

I suppose these posts are a kind of diary. A way of recording simple, sea-scented days while they are happening. I hope you don't mind their meandering nature. Thank you for stopping by and slowing down with me during these few days. E x