A Coastal Walk (with seals!)

Come walk the East Coast with me

When I visit my mother on the East Yorkshire Coast, I love to take a few walks.

With this in mind, I thought I’d share with you some of the sights and thoughts I experienced whilst walking today.

Danes Dyke was the first stop. It’s a deceptive little place, starts off all cutesy woodland before delivering you mercilessly to the silver jaws of the sea.

It’s a pretty picnic spot on a warm day but today, I was content enough to stroll in shade enjoying the squelch of chocolate mud beneath my boots, whilst taking in the zing of brightening bird song.

You arrive at the land’s end by means of gorse. It trims the headland as a golden show curtain. The sunny flower punches the eyes with its fierce yolk yellow whilst the coconut scent swirls and seduces nostrils. I take a few petals between my fingers and place them as small boats in my palm. I rub them and enjoy more of its release, wondering how something found so commonly in Northern England can smell so deliciously tropical.

As I cast my gaze over the bay, I am reminded of the tales my mother told me of Vikings arriving on these shores. It’s a clean stretch of coast, the texture of battle armour, chunky as a belt. Unlike pirates (whom I imagine to be a bit shifty, shuffling about in coves and stuff), I envisage Vikings arriving brazenly, openly, ready to claim whatever the hell they liked, hot tempers raging. The thrashing of the waves seems to confirm my instincts, as they reminisce lustily with silent chalk faces.

Amidst this hungry energy, large white stones grace the beach like eggs of a gigantic stork. I smile thinking how the world is constantly rebirthed by means of the images we hold in our heads. Nature and imagination are such perfect playmates.

The gentle fug of gorse gives way to the bracing sea air. You don’t ‘take it in’ so much as it takes you, passionately tumbling into your mouth and lungs with vigour.  Not just your airways, clothes are entered and billowed as compliant sails.

As we make our way back through the woods, there are glades of wild garlic, the first frills of bluebells and mounds of pale primroses. Plenty of fabric choice for shy woodland fairies to fashion their dresses for the forthcoming Spring ball. Tree blossoms open their pink and green. New life is everywhere

A little further on, we reach Flamborough Head and there are more sensory delights in store.

First thing I notice, is the swirl of gulls that beset the cliffs. They appear from a distance to be flying fragments of it. Their white and grey fleck the air like the crumblings of broken pottery. This siege of wing animates the jutting headland and I see not static stone but an eco entity teeming with life.

The wind is woolly here. The air felts every fibre of my hair, it is fluffed and teased into one robust flag. Later at home, I will attempt to pass a comb through it and it will resist, a newly made thatch. I love that something we can’t see can embed itself within us in that way. Like a sauce we are curiously thickened and salted.

Around the corner is an even bigger treat.

Scores of seals bask the beach, owning and disowning time as irrelevant human dream. From a distance, they look like dozens of abandoned upturned rowing boats or unusual long oval pebbles. A mammal henge. They slither their bulk into the water to become lithe fishers, returning as triumphant plump gleams.

Sandy, speckled, dark, just like the seabirds I observed earlier,  their camouflage is seamless. How effortlessly nature demonstrates that all living things are of the earth, not its master. When you see these living pictures move from above or afar, it is like watching the planet breathe and sigh. Each tiny advancement an earned wrinkle.

(Ignore audio as the wind was loud, but enjoy the seals👇🏼)

I have been coming here since I was a child and never have I seen so many seals. What joy!

I head back and as I do, I think of the world from above. Of someone - or something- watching me, a flickering dot. Do I fit like a gull or a seal, adding detail and value to this complex planetary mosaic or do I spoil, deface, impose myself?

So many want to make their mark upon the earth, lay their imprint in word, voice or deed as some human ‘Great Wall Of China’ begging to be noticed. They scream ‘remember me’, demand they are acknowledged as someone who stood out above all else.

But the seals and gulls have reminded me of the importance of harmony, that moving gently with the rhythm of the earth, working with its sway rather than against it, is the kindest, most beautiful tribute we can leave.

If you enjoyed this post, please check out my other musings by clicking on ‘Musing ’ at the the top of the ‘Mother Of Hope’ home page.