stranded on the rocks

I jumped across the little stream. My trainers squelched in the sand and my shadow, long and unusual, wobbled about as I found my balance. It looked funny today, my shadow. The wind was blustering in from the Atlantic, as it always does at Newgale, and ruffling my hair. The uneven sand forced the dark shape to roll over the undulations in the beach like a hall of mirrors. I felt a bit like Perseus, doing his best not to catch sight of Medusa while her shadow snaked about in the sand.

The sea was sparkling. Under a pure blue sky, it gleamed to the horizon in the afternoon sun. As the waves pounded into the shore and the surfers stumbled onto their boards, the sunlight caught the spray and lit up the surf. Crash, boom, seep, went the ocean in its ancient rhythm. I shoved my hands into my hoodie and strolled around the headland. On this part of the coastline, the tide goes out a long way, leaving a vast expanse of flat wet sand. Studded with pebbles and rocks, the beach stretches out and around the cliffs, exposing an extra half-mile of sand that sweeps round the bay. It's here where stratus rocks lie angled into the shore, and deep diagonal caves gape into the cliff-face. Today, as I walked (looking for one cove in particular) I saw children in wet-suits splashing in deep green rock-pools that had formed in some of the caves, dogs chasing bouncing rubber balls and white toes pointing skyward to catch the sun. These natural alcoves it seems, form natural windbreaks for young families, away from the kite-surfers and trendy couples of the main stretch at Newgale. Tartan blankets flapped in the breeze, held down by thermos flasks and coolbags.

I like being alone. It bothers me sometimes, makes me worry about the moments when it won't be possible to escape the company of others. For me though, holidays like this are a perfect chance to wander anonymously across the sand, clamber over dripping rocks and explore caves and rock-pools with no thought of time or responsibility. We had laughed at Dad when I was younger - how he would disappear along the beach with his metal detector. For an hour or so, Mum would wonder whether we should 'get on with lunch' without him, and I would pull out my copy of 'A Brief History of Time' or start looking for stones to skim.

I think I understand now. I'm often more like him than I'm prepared to admit. No family were waiting for me though today.

I found it. It looked a bit different when the tide was out, but this must have been the place. Rocks zig-zagged in the wet sand like jagged stepping stones, huge walls either side, and at the back, a smooth flat rock about the size of a table with another smaller stone in front. Behind, and unseen from the beach, there was a dark underpass, a tunnel connecting to the next cove along the shoreline. It was here that I had been almost stranded by the tide two years ago. I remember sitting on the table-rock, Bible in hand as the water lapped around my feet and surged in through the tunnel. It was different today. Sometimes, I reasoned, the lesson is about what you do when you're waiting for the tide to change.

-

So, home tomorrow. It's been a great holiday this - mathematics, brain-twisting rubik's cube games, cats named after the Greek alphabet, good food, great company, sunshine, church, windy-walks along the cliffs, long lie-ins and hardly a thought about the world I left behind. I kind of wish though, I could just... well... keep that mobile phone switched off... it's so nice without it. And a world without facebook seems somehow, simpler, better, more... innocent and unaware. As one who complicates things beyond belief sometimes, I'm all for keeping things simple - believe it or not. Maybe, in some ways all this is just God's way of telling me that even in the seeping, surging craziness of life around me, I should spend more time stranded on the rock.