Fresh from a high tide swim, still outlined in cold, we packed our bags and set out for Barmouth. We took a winding path around the edge of the headland, under old oaks bending and twisting with burnished leaves. The bracken at the sides of the path is burn coloured and curling, dried before dying. We squelch through a thick patch of mud, look down on mats of yellowed bladerwrack just below the surface. Ahead of us we see the wooden railway bridge that crosses the mouth of the estuary, slicing between sea and sky. The slate underfoot is slashed with a hundred shades, pewter and shale and copper. We are mesmerised by the seaweed, hunch down to look at it, to poke at it, lift it, slippery, slimey, squished. Olivey golden rockweed sprouts in clusters like muppets hair and bladder wreck is tangled in rainbow shades I’ve never seen before, almost the colour of coral. There are half crescents of sunburst lichen bright against the rock as we walk on.
We cross the bridge, catching glimpses between the planks of the sucking water below, walk up into town and down to the beach. It is a huge pale expense of sand, rising to tufted dunes, rippled with the memory of the retreating tides. We walk to the edge of the ocean, over low water that turns the shore to a mirror. The wind races around us, carrying loose sand with it, ever shifting sand ghosts whirling away to the horizon.
Bonnie Radcliffe 