crest

 

The past week has provided plenty of opportunity  to indulge my passion for wave-watching.

Storm Caroline turned out to be exhilarating, but not nearly as ferocious as other storms we’ve seen here in the last few years. The silver lining, for me, was a wonderful, almost unearthly light, not the usual unremitting, dreich, if dramatic, gloom that accompanies these weather monsters. Caroline brought a sky of swiftly moving, billowing squalls, interspersed with plenty of fleeting snatches of ultramarine blue/phthalo turquoise, which cast the sea in a pearly-aqua glow.

 

 

 

The worst effects were felt by the substantial stretch of dunes which fringe our little bay. A combination of the super moon, with its higher than normal tides and the storm, meant that the waves tore a chunk of about a good metre from the final section of our usual path down to the beach. The lowest sections of marram grass were devoured by waves, their roots excavated, shredded and left exposed to the bitter winds.