248 Late morning air on Kilve beach

Full Episode description

Kilve beach is edged by sheer cliffs and is made of rocks. Mostly small ones the size of oranges, up to medium sized ones the size of sofa cushions. To cross over them is unstable and you have to move like a penguin, which must be fun to watch if you aren’t the one trying to stay upright. Jutting up between the smaller rocks are huge mattress sized boulders that are either massive flat topped rocks of unimaginable weight, or maybe if you could look below have no underside at all because they are the exposed surface of the Earth’s crust. They make excellent resting points where you can temporarily stop from awkward walking and admire the amazing view.

Having progressed some way along the beach we reached a smooth ridge of rock that ran for a long stretch perpendicular to the sea. It afforded us a path to walk on for a while. Either side of the ridge pools of stranded seawater had gathered beside piles of tangled seaweed. The atmosphere at this point had softened considerably, and there was in addition to being able to hear the sea a kind of silence too, immediately around us, so pure you could hear tiny bubbles popping in the rock pools. 

It had something to do  with the rock cliffs of Kilve. They were doing something interesting. Cupping and reflecting sound, acting like the back wall of a theatre. Ahead the shoreline, though only about fifty yards away, was below the sound horizon owing to a very steep rake on the beach. This has the effect of mellowing the breaking waves, emphasising the weight of the waves rather than the brightness of the turbulent water. Occasionally a seventh wave breaks over a rocky outcrop directly centre of scene sending a plume of foaming suds high into the air and for a few moments above the sound horizon. 

* Far left of scene you can sometimes hear children playing on the beach with their dad, maybe looking for fossils. Some hardy birds that make a peeping call swoop around too. As the episode opens a tiny microlight aeroplane crosses the sky from left to right, going almost directly overhead. For some reason we love this sound, it seems to reflect that free feeling you get on a wide open beach. You may notice the tide is very gradually coming in over the episode, yielding more splashes and watery details from the breaking waves as time progresses.