Shifting sand

Taken by water by Lois

Weston-super-Mare, where I live, has a wide sandy bay, but beyond the sand is mud, mud, dangerous mud. Our little town is on the Severn estuary, and other rivers flow into what becomes St George’s Channel too so we get a lot of sediment in the sea too. The village we live in on the southern end of the bay has a river running into the sea here, so more mud. The Bristol Channel has the second highest tidal range in the world, and the low tide mark in Weston Bay is about a mile out from the seafront. So when the tide is out there are vast mudflats; all along the beach are warning signs about how dangerous the beach can be, but every year people ignore the signs, drive out to where their cars get stuck, or walk out and get stuck themselves, and sadly we have had people drown because of it.

When the tide comes in, racing in, it comes in beneath the surface as well as across it, and the sand and mud can turn to gel, trapping the unwary. What looks sound, safe and secure can suddenly be extremely dangerous. As a writer I sometimes want to create a similar scenario for my readers; everything in the narrative seems safe and stable, the reader is led to believe certain people are sympathetic and nice and is lead along a reading path which seems predicable. They anticipate where the story is going and maybe even how it is going to end. I like to change the apparent into the unexpected – so suddenly characters are in a different situation, and maybe reveal different things about themselves, hidden motives for example. However, just as on Weston beach there are signs and warnings, so in a narrative there have to be signs, sometimes subtle ones though, so when the unexpected does happen it is in a believable context.

This hovercraft was on the beach by Uphill, where we live…

10 Comments

      1. mariathermann

        Fly into Hamburg, take the train to either the Island of Ruegen or head for Timmendorfer-Strand, Niendorf or Travemuende (same train), if you like your beaches white and pebble free and the water temperature just about bearable. It’s very posh, be warned. I should know, spent 24 years of my life there. Ruegen is amazing. The train goes all the way there from Hamburg. It’s a lovely island, full of interesting history and also great outdoor activities. There’s a nature reserve there and no fewer than, if I remember rightly, 5 lighthouses.

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      3. mariathermann

        Ruegen Island contains the largest “holiday camp” every built, a complex of buildings nearly 2km long…it was designed for 20,000 families of SS officers, and had a secret U-boot harbour only found comparatively recently. Most buildings are derelict, but one’s a museum I think. It’s an eerie place and very sobering. The little narrow gauge railway line on the island was constructed so Hitler’s holiday camp could be built. It transported building material as well as workers, apparently. Today it’s a charming tourist steam train, of course.

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      4. Lois

        Sounds as if it might have a lot of ghosts… Is there an area which is very marshy, with lots of little islands and waterways – I read a novel once set somewhere like that and I had the feeling it was along the Baltic coast… but it’s a long coast of course!!

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      5. mariathermann

        Sounds more like the North Sea coast, das Wattenmeer (can’t remember the English name, something similar), another of those suck-you-down-in-a-flash places; very dangerous indeed. Generally speaking, the Baltic Sea coast is all sandy beaches and chalk cliffs in places.

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