low tide

There's been loads of damage to the Wirral coast over the past weeks with some terrifying moments recorded on Youtube (see later).

But on Saturday afternoon the sky over Hoylake and Meols turned a deep grey, the sand looked orange in the strange light and the far away tide was a silver line of dancing surf.

Had I been a painter, a watercolour would have captured this perfectly, but by the time I'd stopped and tried to capture the colours on my camera, the moment had passed.  Or as Seamus Heaney put it so eloquently in that wonderful poem, Postcript 

"Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open"

By Monday there was a transformation and as we wandered along West Kirby front, the marine lake was mirror-still, the Welsh mountains stood calm as ever across the Dee esturary and Hilbre and the Little Eye were accessible over the sands. 

and here we were looking right across to the Welsh coastline we explored on the other side of the river last September - see River Ride

and as we returned to the car, the sun started to dip and the clouds set in and the mirror images were amazing!  Not quite as colourful as those I took back in August - see Ice Cream Castles but gentle in all shades of grey and changing every second.

Beautiful.

So here's some of the YouTube coverage of the high tides and storms this past couple of months . . .

West Kirby

and Hoylake

and across the other side of the peninsula, the Mersey is battering Vale Park in New Brighton!

All the reasons why I love the sea so much.  Wild, calm, untamable, unpredictable, ever-changing.