Every run along the beach is different every time. The tide churns up stones and drops them, different stones, different sizes, different tides. There's big stones and small stones, sea glass and sea coal, drifts of sea coal, tiny fragments of black on the pure yellow sand. There's sea weed, always sea weed, always left by the tide in the same spot on the beach right by the cliff. A tractor today, a man with a lucky job, working for the council, scooping up the sea weed in the tractor's heavy bucket, carrying it back to the shore, giving it back to the sea.
If I run early enough, the beach is almost deserted now the dog walkers are banned on the central sands over the summer and instead walk on the fringes, dogs running straight to the sea, chasing balls, chasing their tails, never barking, never growling, loving the space, the light and the air, the water, as much as their owners, the runners, the joggers, the bare back horse riders who only ever appear very early on a morning splashing through the shallows. And there's more at the shore. The bride and her groom having photographs taken against the sea and sand backdrop before the day trippers arrive and the ice-cream van comes.
