Not long ago I was talking to a Swiss artist friend, when I mentioned the subject of the sea. He said he wasn't particularly drawn to it as he felt the sea was rather like the end of everything. I think I can remember back to a time when the sea was without great interest for me either, before I ever got in a kayak or paddled out on a surfboard, before I came to understand that the sea is where everything begins...
4 am last Saturday and I was filling a water bottle in the dark at a standpipe by some beach huts in Studland, staring absently at a child's forgotten bucket and spade, when I remembered this conversation and in my dazed, half-woken state had a sudden realisation that the sea, for the English, and the mountains, for the Swiss, must have very much in common. The last truly wild places left and we surround their margins with remarkably similar resorts, restaurants, cafes and shops, allowing people to splash about in the shallows or ski around on some safe groomed pistes, while in the background, unexplored by the mass of people who go there to enjoy and admire from afar, lies an undiscovered region. Sea or mountain, untamed places, indifferent to the continued existence of the individual, both the last chance civilised humanity has to truly feel alive, places which yield to those who care to look for it a chance to experience the sublime, to be of the planet and to exist in it.
My bottle must have been full by this point, time for reflection over, forced down some breakfast, packed boats, watched the moon rise as a crescent of pure fire edging the grey sphere, visible in its entirety, above the chalk cliffs and stacks of the Dorset coastline, then the beginnings of daylight bluing the horizon and we set out, past Old Harry and along our planned bearing, heading for the needles at the extremity of the Isle of Wight. The wind was light, the water pleasantly bouncy, the sun emerging over the horizon, wind picking up and giving us waves to surf on, our destination slowly emerging on the edge of vision, next to storm clouds which slowly dissipated and moved off out to sea.
And as the sky slowly brightened and our target became firmer on the horizon, I realized I was completely happy, happy in my sleek little boat and my familiarity with the way it handles, happy with the shifting contours of the sea, constantly forming and reforming, with the freshness of the sea air, the circling sea birds and the pure simplicity of the view.
We made steady progress, surfing a following sea and going through the Needles to land at Alum bay with its rockslides, coloured sand and incongruous chairlift, waves dumping on the steep shingle, for a brief rest, then the long slog up the Solent back to Lymington, first enjoying fresh green water and sunlight, passing yachts, then battering against the turning tide till we crawled out onto a concrete beach on the other side and flopped in a heap. Then a final push up the Lymington river, landed on a slipway virtually inside the station and began a complex series of train, taxi and chain ferry rides back to recover vehicles and rescue our friends and boats, several hours later, from the ferry terminal car park.
Final verdict: Worth getting up at 3.45 for. (and not many things are)
Day two: Kimmeridge up the coast to Durdle Door and back again. Spectacular as ever and some interesting water too.
Pictures to follow, and maybe even a GPS trace…
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