Symbolic Forest

Regular readers might remember that two or three years back, I visited the Buck Beck Beach Bench, a strange and delightful bench built up from driftwood on one of the remoter stretches of Cleethorpes Beach. I haven’t been back very much since that visit, what for one reason and another, but I did keep following the Bench and its creators on social media. Because of that, I knew that twice since, it had been completely destroyed by storms; and then, rebuilt. After all, the Bench first started as a ramshackle, makeshift affair for dog-walkers to sit on whilst they waited for the tide to turn, and it was created by slow, organic growth rather than some grand plan. When it is destroyed, it comes back, recreated with the same impulse to create something, build something, and create a record that people stood in a particular spot and stared out at the ever-changing ocean.

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Keyword noise: Cleethorpes, beach, coast, river, estuary, Humber, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, shore, shoreline, folk art, bench, Buck Beck Beach Bench.

“Are you going to go and watch the sunrise on New Years Day?” said more than one person over the past week or two. Initially, I agreed, it seemed like a rather nice idea. The sunrise is too late at the moment for me to really go and see it on a work day such as the Winter Solstice, so New Years Day seemed like a suitably symbolic alternative. However, I had second thoughts. A long-distance running race was scheduled for that morning. Not only would it bring crowds, but it also would block off my usual access to the beach from around sunrise until well after lunch. I thought better of trying, so had a lie in instead. On the 2^nd I had other plans, which I’ll tell you about later in the week; so finally, today, I headed down to the beach for my first sunrise this year.

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Keyword noise: new year, Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, beach, dawn, sunrise, coast.

A month or so ago, I wrote about going walking on Cleethorpes Beach in the early morning, and I said at the time that as the tide goes out and comes back in, I would come back here with more to say about it. Well, I’m not the only one. Yesterday The Guardian published a travel article about just how nice a place Cleethorpes is to visit, including the beach of course, and including the thing I was always planning to write about in Part Two. So, before you click on that link there, read this first.

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Keyword noise: Cleethorpes, beach, coast, river, estuary, Humber, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, shore, shoreline, folk art, bench, Buck Beck Beach Bench.

Since changing jobs, I’ve been going for early morning walks most workdays. For about an hour or so, I’ve been walking up to the woods overlooking the village, or following the riverbank and canalbank, or walking across the fields to the next village and back. It’s a really good way to start the day. When I go to visit The Mother, though: well, there aren’t really any interesting places to walk and back in an hour. There aren’t actually very many public footpaths outside the village itself; there’s no river, and the woods are too far away. I was at a bit of a loss.

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Keyword noise: Cleethorpes, beach, coast, river, estuary, Humber, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, The Cute Accountant, shore, shoreline.

By the time you read this, we will be in internet-connection limbo. The broadband will be down for a few days. No up-to-the-minute topical blogposts. No uploading photos, although, as I’m on a several-months backlog as per usual, nobody is likely to notice.

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Keyword noise: breakwater, cliffs, coast, harbour, lighthouse, photography, pier, sea, seaside, Whitby, Yorkshire.

A month or so ago, we took a trip to Clevedon, Somerset. I wrote about it at the time, although, I realise now, didn’t explicitly say which town we’d been to. Here, though, are some of the photographs.

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Keyword noise: abandoned, Bristol, Christmas decorations, Church Road, Clevedon, Clevedon Pier, coast, derelict, frozen, hotel, ice, lake, moon, night, North Somerset, park, park bench, photography, pier, resort, Royal Pier Hotel, sea, seaside, Somerset, St George.

Bude, in North Cornwall, back in May. A study in clouds and sea-spray.

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Keyword noise: Atlantic, Bude, clouds, coast, Cornwall, North Cornwall, ocean, photography, sea, seaside, shore, storm, surfing.