Things seem to be picking up in my job this week. I’ve gone from being in the midst of a quiet patch to having several pieces of work fall at my feet. In part this is due to three members of our team leaving – one of whom I’ve known about for awhile, but the other two have come as a bit of a surprise – and I’ve been asked to pick up work they have been, or are currently involved with. This is a good thing – I’d much rather be busy than pushing papers around my desk (although I’ve mostly been using the quiet period to do training), but I’m a little uncertain as to what is required at this stage. I guess I’ll find out soon enough though.
The beach at Bridlington is backed by a sea wall along the stretch in front of the town north of the harbour area. This means there’s a good vantage point for looking down upon the sand and seeing the activities of the people enjoying the seaside, including writing messages in the smooth wet sand.
Despite my own spelling often being atrocious (albeit usually due to my inaccurate keystrokes, rather than an inability to spell), I seem to be quite good at seeing other peoples typos, such as the ones present in the first two pictures shared today. To be fair to the authors, it’s a lot easier to spot them from up on the promenade, than it probably is a beach level.
The third shot is spelt accurately, although it’s missing an apostrophe in “mums” and the spacing leaves a little to be desired. It’s not lacking in impact though, and I wonder what “mum” thought about the message?
Back to black and white again. The coming series of posts will be photographs I made during a day trip to Bridlington with my wife back at the start of August.
This shot seems quite grainy for FP4+, but I do like the light and the expansiveness of the beach, with the coast curving around to the distant promontory of Flamborough Head.
An angler digs for bait at low tide on Cleethorpes beach. The beaches around the uk are a prime habitat for lugworm, which are a popular sea fishing bait. They can be bought from fishing tackle shops, but can also be harvested from the sea shore in areas where it is permitted to do so.
The worms are filter feeders and live in u-shaped burrows with a small dimple at one end and a distinctive squiggly cast at the other meaning they are easy to locate when the tide is low.
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.
I’ve got three beach scenes to publish today. All taken at Bridlington.
The weather at the time was calm and there was a layer of high thin cloud as well as a fine sea-mist that threw the horizon into a dim line. There’s a sense of calmness to some of the shots, I think.
Curiously, some of the figures on the beach have an oddly faded look to them, like they are not fully there. I’m not sure of the cause, but wonder if the orange filter I was using might be the culprit?
While I was in Hornsea a few weeks back I noticed this man photographing something on the other side of the seawall. To be fair, I knew exactly what he was photographing – the waves crashing against the defences – but I wanted in on this sweet ocean action so, after taking a quick candid, I waited my turn and then made my own picture.
The guy in the photo looked like he had a telephoto attached to his camera, which probably benefited the scene when compared with the fixed 42mm glass on my Olympus 35RC, but the best camera (and lens!) is the one you have with you, right?
Olympus 35 RC & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
The photograph today shows the view looking north from Bridlington harbour, with the beach stretching on towards the village of Sewerby with its well-tended bungalows and from there, where the beach falls back into the cliffs, the spit of land that curves around to Flamborough Head.
Flamborough is a place on my list of locations to visit this summer, although I’m not sure if I’ll get there or not yet. I stayed in a cottage there once when I was young on a trip with my grandparents and cousins. Flamborough is a small place and is the location of a lighthouse and a number of scenic coves which, at low tide, allow exploration of the cliff-foot and sea caves.
Flamborough lighthouse It’s glow to be seen afar From land and from sea
After yesterdays photo of a coiled heap of rope on a harbour wall, today there’s a picture of two fellas on a harbour wall (albeit a different section). This trip to Bridlington has, so far, been my only visit to the coast since last autumn. I’ll hopefully get at least a couple more visits before the summer comes to an end though. Because I don’t go too often it always has a charm, and there are always things to photograph.
The British seaside The beach, the sea, the sunshine And some fish and chips
Steel City Snapper photography 