Waves breaking on the beach

It’s such a still night, that sitting here with the window open I can hear the waves breaking on the beach. I see from the tide-table that it was at its height at 8:12 pm, 11.2 metres which converted to feet and inches is 30’75”. This might seem jolly deep but we have the second highest tidal range in the world and a very long sandy/muddy beach for it to rise along. Because we are effectively in the Severn estuary (the Severn being the longest and most voluminous river in Great Britain) we have a lot of sediment in the water.

So here am I, and I can’t hear the sound of waves breaking on a sandy shore, nor of rollers crashing in with splendid vigour, I can just hear the sloosh of the tide and then a sound as if it’s taking a big breath aaaaggghhhhhh. I guess it would be rather more exciting and inspiring to hear breaking waves or crashing rollers, but it’s good enough to hear the sea. It’s 7ºC so nowhere near warm enough to swim, not that many people do as the water is so full of sediment. We are protected from danger by excellent sea defences, flood gates, walls and embankments,  and the channel, rhynes and sewers are well maintained and kept clear.

There is very little traffic in our village, I haven’t heard an engine for ages, but there was a siren from an emergency vehicle just now – however we are used to that as the town hospital is on the outskirts of the village. Occasionally we hear an aircraft making a slow descent as it heads towards Bristol airport, but really, we are very quiet in the evenings and overnight. In a few hours time I will expect to hear the clink of milk bottles from our milkman – yes, milkie delivers late at night so when we get up in the morning there’s our fresh pints on our doorstep.

I can no longer hear waves on the shore, the tide is going out.

My featured image shows the gone-out tide, daytime so you can see its gone-out-ness!