Before I left the house I checked my tide clock to confirm what the view from my window had already told me – the tide was all the way in.   It was still a surprise when I got down there at how high the tide actually was.  I have never seen waves lapping at the foot of the pillbox, for example, and there was just a thin band of sand, a couple of feet wide, because the sea had reached the pebbles and the dunes.  Checking the tide tables on my return, it was indeed a pretty high tide at 4.83m.  

There was nothing much to see on the strandline, which was mainly bladder wrack, leaves and old wood, but the sea itself was absolutely spectacular, and the sky, veering from bright blue to blue-black and back again, provided a wonderful backdrop for both the frothing white waves, the yellowish sand dunes and the bright green golf course.   There were good signs of life on the dunes, with brave early plants producing bright new leaves.  Not just a feast for the eyes, however, but the ears too.   What had originally drawn me to the beach was the thundering roar that announced itself when I opened the front door this morning and on the beach itself it was explosive.

Apart from two men wielding metal detectors, there was absolutely no-one around, so no need to worry about social distancing, which was lucky as short of scaling the sand dunes, or going for an unseasonal paddle, there were places where it would otherwise have been difficult to avoid someone coming in the opposite direction.  On my return leg via the golf course there were a lot more people around, mainly walking dogs but a small group was considerately collecting litter.