selkie song

[ewein2412]

It's now a week since we got back from our week at the beach in Northumberland (my notebook still smells like woodsmoke). Can I just say, again and again, that Northumberland is jaw-droppingly beautiful. We were in Bamburgh, which I think is the most glorious beach in the whole of the UK (when I discovered Bamburgh with a friend of mine 2 years back, her then-6-year-old stood on the sand and uttered, "Is this the Mediterranean?")—there isn't anything remarkable about the landscape itself, really, but the LIGHT! The clear light and near sky does something to it like watercolour on a paper landscape. When we arrived a front was passing away to the south of us, clouds piling up on the horizon in what Mark (who is 5) described as looking exactly like a wave about to crest.

I will stop talking about the weather (this is what happens when you live in the UK for 10 years) and skip over the castles and priories and steam railways and sandstone caves in order to cut to the best part. On Lindisfarne, Holy Island, the place where the Book of Kells was written, we all walked along the beach at sunset. Looking back over the bay towards the mainland the sky was all rose cloud with pinpricks of gold in it, reflected in water and wet sand. Halfway across the bay—half a mile away— was a spit of sand where at least 20 seals were playing—rolling about on the sand, diving and surfacing in the water, stretching and posing. And they were singing. At first we thought it was birds; it was a distant, dovey sort of sound, quite haunting. Sometimes louder, sometimes softer, barking, cooing, howling, hooting.

I think that Northumberland is the Great Undiscovered Vacation Spot of the Known World.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds so heavenly. And I'll bet it wasn't even hot.

[ewein2412]

ha! no, it wasn't hot. We did have one picnic on the beach, which we finally had to retreat from because my feet were so cold they HURT. But we only had 2 days of pouring rain during the whole week.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Two days of rain--a lovely bonus! If I had time off and cash, I would travel far (and indeed would have to) to see (and smell and hear) an actual full day of rain.

[ewein2412]

wow... I feel that way about an actual full day of no rain. It has done nothing but pour for the past two weeks. Isn't the world full of amazing contrasts!

[ewein2412]

(ok, it's only been raining for the past ten days, not two weeks. trust me, you CAN get enough of it. I think the world needs Communism in Weather.)

[meener.livejournal.com]

oh, how utterly beautiful.

for some reason, i always fall instantly in love with any bit of scenery involving the ocean and/or mountains, despite being mostly unable to swim and thoroughly unwilling to hike. japan is wonderful in that if you walk for long enough, you are bound to hit an ocean or a mountain sooner or later.

[ewein2412]

my grandmother always says she loves North Carolina because it has ocean and mountains in the same state. But the UK is very good for having them both at the same time in the same landscape (as is Japan, I suspect!)