Listening to the longshore drift
There's a point along the promenade at Bexhill-on-Sea where the pull of the crashing waves outweighs the ice cream hubbub underneath the pavilion. Where no matter your age, you'll find yourself leap from the walkway and begin the short steep shingle scrunching journey down towards the sea. It's a point, buffeted by a salt-scented onshore breeze, that has no need for sign or marker. No need for a call or shout. A turn-off, from the flat walkway, where you simply follow the invisible tracks of everyone who's ever been, and fall headlong into your own childhood dream. We saw in the distance a man walking across the beach with his child, a kite bobbing in the sky in front of them. We jumped down. We strode in giant steps steep down the shingle. We followed the old wooden groyne and stopped when it stopped, at the water's edge, beside the foam fizzing waves. Standing so near to the surf zone we could feel it. The weight of the sea. Thudding the shingle through our feet. How can anything matter in the face of such weight and movement? We could hear the waves rolling in, interlacing, unfurling and breaking. Swooshing in from left to right, pushed by force of current and prevailing wind. This is the sound of longshore drift. The reason the beach is bisected by groynes. We listened, and marvelled, at the gloriousness of the waves as they raced up the beach to meet us.