The hail shower begins within seconds of the car coming to a halt. Driven by furious gusts, the ice pellets ping off the roof and rattle against the windscreen, sliding down the glass to obscure the sight of the sand and the sea beyond. Then, departing as swiftly as it arrived, the squall is past, the wind subsiding again to a stiff breeze. Getting out for a walk, which had seemed so unlikely just a few minutes before, now becomes a certainty.
Down on the beach there is a curious quality about the day, for it is both bright and simultaneously without clarity. After yesterday’s gale the pale sea still shows line after line after line of foam-topped waves, which, despite the falling tide, are still surging as far up the sand as their diminishing energy will allow.
Above them airborne salt spray hangs like a mist. Overhead, the sky, though flat and overcast, is not dull but painted in a subtle palette of scraped light greys and lilacs and steel-tinted whites that are reflected in the wetly gleaming sand beneath.
The plumage of the few birds present is in harmony with the muted colours of the day. Sanderling, still wintery pale, scatter at my approach from where they were sheltering unseen in the few clumps of kelp that are lying upon the sand. Further down the beach a mixed flock of common and herring gulls face resolutely out to sea. Now and then one or two, unsettled by the wind, rise a few unsteady feet into the air, wings spread, legs a-dangle, before dropping back to the ground.
Then, unexpectedly, the day takes on a silvery cast. The sun, though unable to break through the cloud cover completely, is a bright veiled disc behind it and even this is sufficient both to illuminate the haze above the waves and to lay a blindingly brilliant path of light across the sea beyond them.
But far out on the horizon a deepening purple band would seem to signal yet another change in the weather is on the way.
Follow Country diary on Twitter: @gdncountrydiary
View all comments >