When we came to Golspie we imagined spending time whenever we felt like it walking along the two-mile stretch of sands to the south of the town. How wrong we were: we had forgotten the tides. After a walk this morning, when the tide was low at exactly twelve midday, we found we could only get down the ramp from the Golspie promenade onto the sandy beach about an hour and a half before low - which gave us three hours on the sands before the sea covered them.
Even then there were parts of the sandy beach which were narrow, particularly as the sea has removed large amounts of sand from the beach since we saw it in September. More, the amount of beach exposed depends on the phase of the moon. We are currently approaching first quarter, neaps, when the sea rises and falls the least, exposing a minimum of sand at low.
The further one walks along this beach the wider the sands become - this picture looks back towards Golspie from just short of the end of the beach at the mouth of Loch Fleet.
So our enjoyment of Golspie beach is controlled by the tides - which is fine, as we have lots of other walks we can do - but it is years since I last had the leisure and daily opportunity to enjoy a beach when I felt like it, not since I was a small boy on holiday in a bungalow on a tropical beach near Mombasa, when each day the tides controlled whether my brother and I could swim - at high tide - or walk out across miles of rock pools - at low.
So we are as controlled by the tides as the others that walk this beach, such as this curlew. As it must, we simply need to learn the timings of this beach's tyranny.
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