The restorative power of a seaside circuit breaker
Six years after swapping coast for moorland I still feel the gravitational pull of the sea and the soothing rhythm of a beach walk.
I’ve been feeling a little I don’t know, autumn-y but not in the crisp blue sky and crunchy orange leaves kind of way. More grey and claustrophobic. The moor heavy, looming especially on repetitively dank October days.
I needed a seaside circuit breaker, but while my 14-year-old showed me photos of her friends in Spain this October half term, we headed to Spanish City in Whitley Bay via lunch with her brother in Newcastle for a blast of north sea air. Bracing.
Six years after moving to Ilkley from Bournemouth’s golden sandy beaches, I still feel the gravitational pull of the sea as strongly as ever. We (only) lived there for three years, half as long as we’ve been in Ilkley and far less than Bath, the city we’d moved from, but I quickly learned to love the simplicity of those beach walks. Daily circuit breakers on tap.
The beach was an easy five-minute walk from our front door, and the choice simple when we got there: walk east towards Bournemouth Pier, west towards Sandbanks or pause at Vesuvio and decide over a coffee on the terrace. I knew that whichever direction I chose, the sea, sky and beach huts would be there leaving me free to watch the shape shifting clouds and calm my nervous system.
Because we’d been there less than a year when mum died in May 2015, followed by grandma, her mother, in the August and dad a month later. Both parents and our last remaining grandparent gone in a few short months. Daily walks with Bella, our yellow labrador on the beach were already part of my routine but I think it was after dad’s funeral in the October that there was a shift.
I started having panic attacks. Rapid breaths and punches to the solar plexus would knock me to my haunches and I’d feel an overwhelming urge to get out of the house. To march down to the sea, knowing that my shallow, rapid breathing would slowly fall into a soothing beat in time with my moving feet, a steady four-four rhythm.
Gentle but with enough movement to stop whatever I was feeling from lingering in my body for too long.
I was also a couple of years into a chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia diagnosis and while my symptoms had alleviated – I was out of the sleeping 20 hours a day phase – and I could function, as long as I had fresh air and a sizeable siesta before school pick up (Charlie was 12, Ollie ten and Saskia six). But the additional layer of grief was threatening to tip me over to I don’t know where.
The rhythm of those morning walks with Bella became my bass line, a beat to keep me moving. I’d repeat mum and dad’s ‘one day at a time’ mantra as I walked, asking Bella ‘are we going left or right today?’ knowing that nine times out of ten we’d turn right and head towards Branksome Dene and Canford Cliffs. The white of Old Harry Rocks in the distance beyond Poole harbour, Sandbanks just tucked out of view. And we’d walk.
Walking in straight lines along the prom, picking out beach huts or cafes as markers to stop and turn around made these excursions with Bella easy when life felt anything but.
Because I felt utterly unmoored. This new home not yet familiar enough, new friendships not evolved enough to withstand this grief and my family foundations gone. But this landscape, the soft calm blues, greys and whites of the sea and sky, punctuated by lines of rainbow coloured beach huts was where I felt calm.
I started to see the same dog walkers each morning. I was on first name terms with the dogs, smiling and nodding terms with the owners and there was that small group of older middle-aged men who’d meet every morning at a beach hut at Branksome Dene Chine. I’d see them on my outward leg as they were chucking off their layers, running across the prom and sand into the sea, their chatting voices just heard above the waves. By the time I was heading back towards Alum Chine they’d be back at their beach huts flasks in hand, still chatting.
Hark, now hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky,
Let your soul and spirit fly, into the mystic.
Into the Mystic, Van Morrison
One of the group disappeared for a while and I wondered what had happened, my catastrophising brain coming up with all the scenarios, until one day he was back, now sitting in a wheelchair. I watched as the other men carefully lift him up and making a chair with their arms, gently carried him into the sea for a quick dip before returning to dry land. Such tenderness, friendship was beautiful.
We have no thoughts of moving from Ilkley, we’ve been here for six year and despite the tricky start of finding somewhere to live, breast cancer and Covid in the first few years I love it here, I love walking on the moor and it feels like home.
I used to love the flat walks along the prom, the certainty of placing my feet on the robust concrete surface, sometimes swapping for softer sand. It’s all uneven steps, rocks and sometimes slippery slopes here though. I think carefully about where I place my feet when I’m on the moor, and an abundance of paths to choose from depending on my mood and energy levels.
And the colours and textures too, it’s burnt copper ferns, orange leaves and grey-white sheep camouflaged as rocks right now, but then there’s the purple heather, blonde grasses and all the shades of green the rest of the year. It’s always changing but I do have favourite trees, little landmarks I like to check in on depending on the walk I’m doing.
Sometimes I crave the simplicity of those beach walks and head to the tarn or the riverside and walk laps. A flatter surface, water too, but it’s not the sea.
It’s interesting that in the last two visualisation exercises in the goal-setting workshops with London Writers Salon I’ve pictured myself in a whitewashed single storey home, large desk in front of floor to ceiling windows looking out to sea. It’s reminiscent not of our Bournemouth beach though, but the north east coast. These are my seaside circuit breakers now. Day trips to Saltburn-by-the-sea with its crayon-coloured beach huts, old school pier, fish and chips and crazy golf.
I love Seahouses and Beadnell Bay on the Northumberland coast too and then there’s Nairn and the highlands, this year’s summer escape, but for this half term a circuit breaker in Whitley Bay will more than do.
I started writing this when we got back from Whitley Bay, coming up with its shape, the things – roughly – I wanted to write in my head, but it’s proved harder to write than I thought. Our time in Bournemouth was challenging, the grief overwhelming even if the landscape was healing. But we left abruptly and I’ll never know how our life would have evolved if we’d had more time there.
Maybe there’s also a hint of ‘I can’t believe we left that behind’ that I don’t want to look at too closely. The move to Bournemouth from Bath and then from Bournemouth to Ilkley, both triggered by redundancy, are huge pivot points in my family story, overlaid with grief and loss and ill health.
Maybe going back to those years and re-engaging with those emotions and decisions is forcing me to shine a light on a period I’ve been happy to park, relegating it to wistful sighs over photos of the blue sky and sandy beaches, ignoring how much there is to unpack. Whatever it is, it tells me I need to keep writing it out and see where it takes me. So forgive me if this doesn’t flow, or there are gaps. It’s all a work in progress.
Memoir Watch: 90,000 words and counting
I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order
Eric Morecambe
The good news is that I have a little under 90,000 words in Scrivener (the programme a lot of writers use to manage the book writing process) sorted into around 10 chapters.
The bad news is that while I have a lot of words written, they’re not necessarily the right ones or in the right order. It feels pretty lumpy at the moment. Too much focus on the ‘what happened’ in some areas, not enough ‘so what’ across the piece and some parts of the story barely touched but at least I know what I’m dealing with now. I ‘just’ need to keep going and I thank you for your messages of support, it does help!
With thanks as ever for reading, and please share your circuit breakers, beach or otherwise. I’ll be back in a few weeks and might even get round to a few book reviews! Harriet
Loved this, Harriet, even if there was immense grief & loss within - the feeling of being near water, especially the sea, is such a restorative and healing one. I daydream about days out to the beach with the dog, but always talk myself out of it. The moor looks beautiful in a different way, but those changing colours are gorgeous. Much love, and hugs xx