Roy Hammans reminded me this week that Shingle Street ‘is a place that lends itself to solitary contemplation, especially when you get there in darkness and there’s no one else around’ (he was there to see the sunrise). He’s right: crowds, happy holidaymakers, don’t gather on the stony shore, it’s a place for lone figures and couples, perhaps with a dog for company – the wind off the German Ocean prizes even the smallest groups apart. It’s a landscape with an austere, muted palette that shuns intimacy.
Thanks also to Roy for telling me that the tidal lagoon is ‘apparently properly called a percolation lagoon’. That’s for the process, not the coffee coloured mud at the bottom.
Photo: Shingle Street, 9th August 2019