I visited the Chesil Beach in Dorset when I was in the UK in January 2024. This beach has special memories for me, and I needed some alone in nature time. It wasn’t far to drive, and the sun was shining. It was a tad chilly but okay for a walk on the beach. While there I thought about my overwhelming disappointment in myself, one small part of this was my the loss of writing. I had no motivation, and no energy for writing. It felt like a waste of time, a pointless exercise, and yet it left a yearning hole inside me. While on the beach I wrote some notes…
My excitement wanes and the ever-present frustration wafts up through my body. My card won’t work in the car park, and I only have enough change for an hour. There is no-one around except a man in a van having his lunch, and anyway what would I say? I can’t pay them back and I’m not in the mood to deal with people. I’ve been making a mess of that lately. I thought there was a café, but it looks like a visitor’s information center, no change there. An hour then. Not enough but it will have to do.
I put on my walking shoes and cross the wooden bridge which didn’t exist when I was a small person, there was always a pathway through the encroaching sea though. I step onto the pebbles, and they shift beneath my feet in the only way pebbles can. It feels good. I am a small person again, jumping with my sisters from tuft to tuft of thick grass patches until they run out and it feels like we are on the edge of the world and all the pebbles are sea.
I step onto one of the ‘land masses,’ it’s spongy and covered in tiny green plants that will blossom with pink flowers later in the year. I’m wasting my time here. Although I’m not, memories are good places to go when trying to make sense of life.
I hurry on up the steep pebble bank only to slow once more. Three steps up and two slipping back, that’s what my small feet in their cute wellies would do. Too much haste. I don’t have my child energy with me today so a steady pace it is.
My heart is pounding, not from the exercise but from anticipation, waiting for the moment I crest the top and see the wide expanse of water. Will I experience more than the numbness in my soul?
I’m at the top. The air is full of salt and promise. I stop and breath deep, breath in the smell, sight, and the gentle sound of the sea sucking on pebbles. There is no other sound like it. I feel a connection, a fraction of the joy I know is there, and something peaceful and calming sinks into my tired and sad skin.
The sea before me stretches into forever, Portland with its family connection is to my left and the long curve and sweep of the Chesil to the right. Coming here was a good decision.
I slide and step down the bank, up a smaller one, down again, and again until I reach the place where the pebbles are jewels, glistening in the passing touch of the salty water, where my head is filled with a mesmerising, hypnotising suck, hiss, swoosh, and crash, loud even on this calm day, where my sight shifts between the constantly changing swirls, curls, and bubbles, where the white horses of the sea prance and dance.
The ever-moving, tones of blue, green, and grey water with its contrast of gleaming white where it claims the edge of land, claims me in this moment. What has it seen on its journey around the world? How many times has it noticed a lone woman on the edge, staring, still, lost, and put on a display to distract her from her thoughts? To remind her that constant change is life, and it has as much beauty and strength as it does fear and destruction.
I check my phone. The hour has passed too quick. I’ve not even wandered the shiny pebble path and found treasure to fill my pockets. I want to stay, I’m not ready to leave, but can’t risk a fine.
I trudge back up to the top of the pebble bank, my cloak of sadness is heavy. I stop and look back, then forward. There is a concrete block nearby. On it sits a crow. It looks at me, then looks out to sea.
‘You can’t leave yet. Your task is not complete,’ it caws.
I hear its message, decide, and continue down to the car. My cloak is lighter as if I’d discarded a pocketful of stones. Little me never discarded the treasures chosen for colour, shape, or hole, even though the way back was always harder, a tired body weighed down with precious gems.
I drive back into Wyke Regis, pull over at the first shop I see, buy a sandwich, crisps, a flapjack covered in chocolate, and an iced coffee. Yum. And I now have change.
Back in Chesil beach car park the man in the van looked confused as if he is having a deja vu moment. I feed the parking machine.
Back up the rolling pebbles to the top, my bag a little heavier but I don’t care. I can stay for as long as I need to.
There is a large piece of driftwood, a tree trunk, white, carved by wind and waves, a perfect place to sit, to lean against, to listen to its travel tales while eating my simple lunch.
It gives me some shelter from the cold breeze, gives me space to be.
There are three women wandering the beach, chatting, heads down, eyes focused on the glistening pebbles. Friends. An excited cry, a bending of knees and back, a swoop of a hand. They huddle together to see the prize then walk their own pathways while staying connected with conversation and a shared goal, searching. Another calls out and the process is repeated. Pebbles with holes through is my guess. A lucky pebble.
Why is a stone with a hole deemed lucky when a soul with a hole is unbearably bleak? Maybe the stone takes our emptiness upon itself when we find one.
I watch the women as they walk past on a lower bank, between me and the sea but they don’t look up. They don’t see me. They are about my age, on a lunch break, on a holiday, catching up on old times, wowing over the colours of wet stones, tumbled to perfection over the years. A simple task, a search for treasure on a beach, and yet what pleasure it brings. We have an innate need to connect with nature, to appreciate and see the beauty in something as ordinary as a stone.
I’d planned to walk along the beach and back, but instead I sit, allow memories of creating boats, houses, rockets, cars, and castles, from an outline of whiter stones collected and fought over. Memories of the treasure collections that would dull as they dried at home, but shine again when put in a jar with water. Magic. Memories of the sun sinking into the sea, taking colour and light with it. The moon and stars appearing, listening to and making up stories, snuggling in sleeping bags as the air cooled, watching dad catching fish for breakfast, the hiss of the tilly lamp, the stumble to pick up everything when half asleep and climb the impossible steep pebble bank. Good memories.
The women return from their journey towards Portland, one sees the driftwood log, sees me. I feel her disappointment. I know she wants to sit on it. I put away my picnic rubbish, pat the smooth wood in thanks, and walk down to the edge of the world, absorbing the sea’s messages.
I wander, head down, searching. I crouch low, my hand swoops and I squeal in silence.
I slip the small pebble with its perfect hole into my pocket and walk on.
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