Once you get north of the Thames Estuary, Britain’s east coast is mostly low
to the sea, a littoral landscape of sandy beaches backed by dunes and marram
grass. Where the land does rise above the sea, the resultant cliffs are more
likely to be earthen than rocky. It’s a place where sea and land meld gently
and naturally; and since the sea is the cold North Sea,
it can instil a chill sense of melancholy in the lone walker. MR James used
this to great effect in his ghost stories Oh
Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad and A Warning to the Curious, both set on the east coast in Suffolk. But when I lived
on that coast in Northumberland and looked across the water, it didn’t feel remote;
I always felt that Denmark
was just below the horizon. And once you get to Denmark,
it’s land all the way to Shanghai.
Bamburgh, Northumberland
By contrast, the west coast is mostly as high as the east
coast is low. Apart from mid Wales
and north-west England,
it’s a landscape of sea cliffs and rocky promontories where there is little of
melding gently. Here the sea attacks and the land rebuts, and up on top of the
cliffs you stand amidst a greensward dotted with the multitudinous colours of
thrift and the golden glory of gorse. It’s slightly different in the Western Highlands; there the sea invades and the mountains
look down upon it, glowering. The sense is not of melancholy, but of power and
grandeur. And when you look across the water, you know that you are looking at
the edge of a wild ocean that stretches over 2,000 miles. On the west coast, I
often wondered where home really was.
Castle Point and Dinas Head
Pembrokeshire, West Wales
No comments:
Post a Comment