Sea Harvest

 Merry Xmas to you all.

Here is another article from the pen of my brother, Peter.

The smell of fried bacon still, lingered as we set off to collect Richard.  Mum always insisted we start the day on a good breakfast.  We walked through the garden and over the bottom stile grabbing a handful of peapods as we passed the rows.  Away on the distant hillside a plume of smoke followed the tank engine pulling its few carriages up to the cliff top station.  As we approached the top of the bank we heard the clatter of Len’s horse and cart before it came into view.  Len looked as he always did, covered in black dust, as a coalman should look.   

The red pantiled roofs of the cottages were spread below us like a garish scarf.  Seagulls sat on chimney pots squawking the news at each other and contemplating the likelihood of tasty fish morsels when the fishing boats returned. We ran down the bank past the fish shop and up a narrow cobbled street to Richard’s house.  The smell of fresh bread from one of the village bakeries reminded us to get a penny loaf on our way home.  Richard handed us our buckets, shrimp nets and crab hooks, which we kept down the bank at his house for convenience.  A few houses higher up the lane was our village school and the coastguard station, which had a commanding view of the whole bay.  On the horizon ships were dotted like crumbs on a green cloth.

The smell of the gas works hung in the air as we approached the beach from the cliffs.   Taking off our shoes and tying them by their laces we hung them round our neck and walked up the cliff, and down to the beach.  Our feet were tickled by the grass smoothed by soft mud on the cliffs, covered in sand and finally stabbed by the barnacle covered rocks as we headed for our favourite shrimp pool.  The sea was just leaving it isolated.  We walked across the still cold shallow water, and shuffling our feet into the sand we could feel the shrimps with our toes. 

After collecting a few we left them in one of the buckets and followed the tide down the rocks to collect winkles.  The strong smell of seaweed rotting above the tide line was blown down to us on the offshore breeze.  Carefully stepping over the slippery seaweed we gathered winkles until the tide had receded far enough to expose the scaurs that were home to crabs and lobsters.

The sound of jingling harnesses distracted us and we ran back up the beach to greet the horses and ponies waiting to give rides to visiting holiday makers.  The strong horsey smell was added to as they relieved themselves on the wet sand.  As usual we volunteered to lead the donkeys on their 10 minute route along the sand and back.  Our reward may be a free ride at the end of the day.  There wasn’t enough business to warrant our help so we were asked to come back later.

Jim the sea urchin man was setting up his stall.  If we were lucky and found a couple of good sea urchins he would give us three pence for them.  He would clean off the spines, gut and polish them and filled them with thrift and heather flowers they would provide the tourists with a memento of their holiday.  Before returning to the hunt we built a dam at the outflow of one of the draining pools.  The soft sand squidged between our toes as we battled in vain to stop the tides outflow with rocks and scooped handfuls of wet sand.

The sun rose higher and dried the sand above the tide line.  The breeze played with empty cigarette packets, before dropping them back on the sand.  John my elder brother decided the tide was right to look for crabs.  We retraced our steps over the barnacle and limpet encrusted rocks, before stepping off the scaurs to find the holes where the crabs hid.  Glances back to the village, which nestled in a gap in the cliffs, through which a stream flowed, showed us that we had our bearings right.  The scrabbling of our crab hooks in gaps in the rocks almost drowned out the soft rippling sound of sand and pebbles being fondled by the sea.  We searched in vain, and soon returned to the beach.

A noisy game of beach cricket was in progress, and we soon joined in.  Shouts and curses erupted when our wet ball landed on the back of a young woman sunning herself higher up the beach. 

Soon John shouted, ‘Here’s Mum,’ and we left the game and joined her and Richard’s mother with our picnic lunches.  Orange juice was greedily swigged down before tucking into our egg and cress sandwiches and cold sausages.  An apple for a pudding and then maybe an ice cream cornet from Trillo’s van that stood at the foot of the slipway.  It was our lucky day.  The cold soft ice cream and the crunchy wafer was the perfect finale to a summer’s morning on the beach.