Time to Stare
Northumberland has one of the wildest and exhilarating coastlines in England. Combine this with the smooth Cheviot Hills inland and you have an ideal location for those who value time spent in wild places. This image was made at Budle Bay, a wide expanse of tidal flats with a huge dune system wedged between Bamburgh and Holy Island. It is one of those special locations that makes me tingle as I walk in, bringing a sense of my true insignificance in the Big Scheme. The place has an atmosphere.
There is rarely less than double-figure wind, although I experienced total calm and a booming silence here one mid-summer evening. At low water deeply rippled trenches gouged out by the tidal rush lure you over like a mermaid through ankle-grabbing sand. These patterns, often gathered in a queue of concentric half-circles, are repeated almost mirror like down to the sea. As you walk towards the waves the sheer vast canvas of the sky draws your eye upwards. A minute later you stop to look again and it has evolved a new design. A minute later, another.
On a mid-April evening I strolled through the dunes, stopping to watch galleons of cloud racing towards Holy Island. My eye completed the journey, snaking through the high dune to seek the waves and then the horizon. Often I strive to make images with mystery and intrigue, but I am old enough to also enjoy making photographs that bring delight. As I waited for the warm kiss of sunlight on the marram grasses, William Henry Davies's poem ran through my mind: What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare....at an ever-changing sky.