It seems that every time I visit Cleethorpes, I photograph Papa’s fish and chip restaurant. Or, rather, I photograph the pier. Papa’s just happens to be the current tenant. It’s a photogenic scene though, so I’m not surprised that it draws my lens.
I think this is the third time I’ve featured the pier and chippy on the blog (here and here, although it might be in some other posts too , just not where I’ve mentioned it by name).
These groynes are both at Cleethorpes, but the ones I remember most vividly are the ones at Mablethorpe, a little further down the coast (although those didn’t have marker posts as far as I remember).
On days at the beach they would provide lots of opportunities to play at receding, or low tide. Most of the groynes would trap pools of water beside them or around their ends, and these were often good places to catch small crabs (I never saw any more than a few inches across their shells). The water in these pools could sometimes be deceptively deep (maybe three or four feet sometimes) and it was quite easy for the waterlogged sand to collapse beneath your feet and lurch you into the depths. I have memories of my sister doing this when she was a toddler – suddenly flipping headfirst into the water fully dressed before she was swiftly grabbed and rescued by my mum.
The outflowing water provided a multitude of engineering projects for my young self, usually in the form of creating dams, or sometimes intricate and meandering canal systems to take the water to holes I’d dig in the sand. Sometimes I would float small pieces of driftwood, upturned shells, or lollipop sticks and watch them make their way out to sea (or, usually, to a place where the sand could no longer hold its structure and the waterway had collapsed).
Unlike Cleethorpes, the groynes at Mablethorpe are no longer present. Or if they are, then they are buried beneath the sand. Mablethorpe undertook a project of offshore dredging to place a thicker layer of sand on the beach. This has not only removed the groynes, but also made some of the sea defences less vertiginous than I remember them being when I was little.
This wooden post protrudes from the sand at the northern end of Cleethorpes beach, just beyond a stone breakwater. The water comes right up to the sea defences at this part of the beach, as evidenced by the treacherously slippery concrete I had to navigate, but at low tide a large expanse of sand is exposed. I say ‘sand’, but because Cleethorpes sits at the mouth of the Humber estuary, it’s a brown, silty, almost muddy sand, quite different to the golden grains you normally imagine a beach to be made of.
Further south towards the other end of the resort, the sand becomes “beachier” (if that’s a word), with the high tide not reaching as far, and more conducive to typical seaside beach activities. However, this wooden post doesn’t stand on that part of the beach.
After spotting it from the shore, I decided to walk across the beach to take the picture you see here. This was mostly uneventful – the sand was wet, with waterlogged ripples present, and mostly firm underfoot. However, in a couple of places, it felt somewhat less secure and I felt my foot instantly sink a few inches when I placed it in certain spots. As I’d reached the post I took the picture, but I was regretting having done so. While there were no signs in evidence indicating quicksand, that didn’t mean that there might not be treacherous sections present and, even if I wouldn’t sink completely, the thought of getting stuck in a foot or so of cold muddy sand didn’t appeal, so I quickly (and carefully – following my footsteps) retreated to the safety of the more solid sand closer to the sea defences.
I’m not sure of the purpose of the wooden post – there are no signs affixed, and it doesn’t have the marker atop it in the same way that the posts at the end of wooden groynes do. Maybe it’s to warn idiot photographers away?
Back at the closing days of December, just before New Year, I decided to take a trip to the seaside. Cleethorpes is the resort that’s easiest to get to as it can mostly be reached by motorway, with the journey taking about eighty / ninety minutes or so.
Attractions at British seaside resorts are largely closed at this time of the year, as can be seen from the picture of the helter-skelter and big wheel (sans seats) that stand on the beach just past the pier. Largely closed doesn’t mean totally closed though, and there were still arcades and cafes open (I even had myself an ice-cream before I left for home!).
I managed to get good weather for most of the time I was there, the cloud cover only arriving (along with rain) as I was heading back to the car at the end of my visit, and I shot four rolls of film through the GW690. Most of them have turned out well and I’ll be publishing them over the coming week, although I did make a complete noob mistake of shooting a couple of frames with the lens cap on – a painful error when you only get eight shots per roll!
The hotel we stayed in in Malaga was very nice, but it was a city centre place and didn’t have any sort of outdoor relaxation options such as a pool or terrace, not even room balconies, so when we weren’t out, the only place to sit (other than in the bar or reception area) was the room.
City breaks are great, but sometimes it’s nice to just chill with a book or newspaper or something in a relaxing location. As a result, we toyed with the idea of going to the beach one day and hiring a couple of sun loungers and a beach umbrella. Unfortunately, all the umbrellas on the part of the beach nearest to us (and maybe the entire beach for all I know) were fixed into the sand with canopies made of palm fronds (as can be seen in the second picture below). While these are fine to an extent, they are limited by the movement of the sun and also of the position of fellow beach users, both of which will result in times when you’re unable to make use of the shade. As the temperature was in the mid thirties while we were there, and as my skin fries like bacon given half a chance, we decided to forgo the idea.
I still took these couple of pictures of the beach one evening though.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Colorplus . Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Another quick post today as I’ve spent several hours driving to pick up my wife and sister-in-law from the airport, so I’m just going to drop this picture of Blackpool North Pier in here.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Blackpool North Pier marked the spot where my roll of black and white film ran out (pictures still to come!), and where I switched to a roll of Kodak Ektar. The three pictures here show stuff on the pier, plus one shot of the view north from the pier. I cropped the third shot as there was quite a lot of uninteresting sky in the image and I felt it looked better without.
The colours are still a little off in these frames, but not too bad, I don’t think.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
I was going to move onto a different set of photos from today but I’ve had a strange day where I’ve been feeling tired, listless, and unable to focus on stuff, which is not a particularly nice sensation. So I’ll hopefully find time to post something more meaningful tomorrow.
But here are the last couple of pictures I’ll post from the Bridlington trip.
Steel City Snapper photography 