Sea Day

Burntisland to Aberdour, Fife, Scotland

On the right hand side you can just make out 2 arches of the Forth Bridge, the railway bridge across the Firth of Forth

When I get off the train at Burntisland station and walk downhill to the main street I only vaguely remember how to reach the Fife Coast Path but I ask a couple of helpful people who tell me where to go. The day gets warmer, the sun stronger, the path is dappled with sunlight. For a while the sea is only visible in the distance, the path is on the far side of the railway line. After days of rain and cold and grey cloud, suddenly it’s warm, the trees are almost motionless, they lean gracefully over the path, which soon turns and goes underneath a small stone bridge, under the railway line, so it is now close to the sea, just a few rocks, and a small stony beach between path and sea.

I go and sit for a while on the lumpy stones, all sizes and shapes, all colours, some rounded, some sharp-angled, a few big enough to sit on comfortably. I take my shoes off, take a few steps into the water. There’s a small strip of sand by the rocks at the end of the bay. I wipe my feet dry with my socks. I sit there for some time. It feels like the place I want to be, sitting here, the sea rustling a little on the stones, the peace and solitude. Usually I don’t stop, I want to stride on along the path. But today I want to be here, just me and the sea, it feels like the best ever place to be, this solitude, sunshine and sea.

Back on the path I meet people coming the other way, some with dogs. This part of the path so close to the sea, reminds me just a little of the Lungomare at Opatija, Croatia.  Except that the black iron railings of the Imperial Walkway were geometrical and elegant and like so much else built in the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, designed to last. 

Here there is a regular, serviceable fence with wooden posts connected by strands of wire, sagging in places – utilitarian rather than beautiful.

Spots of sunlight falling through the trees form round coins. I wonder why they become round and think that perhaps it is the distance from the tree tops to the ground. In the way that shadows close to a white surface, of screen or wall, faithfully show the contours of the object, whether leaf, hand or sundial, but as the distance between object and surface becomes greater, the shadow becomes fuzzier, less clearly defined. Perhaps it works the same way with light. But it is interesting that the blurring of the light tends to the formation of a circle.

In the first sandy bay on the approach to Aberdour, there are quite a few people, there’s a cafe, benches and there are also 2 lifeguards and admonitions for people to swim between the red and yellow marker flags. No one is swimming here, but there is someone in a kayak, near the shore.
Following the road past the car park, it fades out into a path, first of all with views over the sea, then heading uphill before it turns into a series of twisting steps going downhill, and all shaded by trees. This comes out onto a path beside the water, a couple of old stone houses, a small marina, then it crosses a pedestrian wooden bridge. Just before the path turned a corner – still shaded by trees, I spot a heron. 

Round the corner is the next beach, smaller, more intimate, backed by large tree-shaded houses. A young woman swims in the water. A few people sitting on the sand. I take my shoes off again, and walk along the beach, through the shallow water. The sand is mixed with small stones and pieces of shell. I think of Jurkalne in Latvia, its smoothest of sands, its long white beach, empty except for a scatter of shells and a bleached white tree trunk. And of the coves, also deserted, in the north east of Corfu, with a view over the water, of Saranda, Albania. The light blue water, the hot October sunshine. 

I find a bench to sit on. The memories settle into this unexpected sea day. Time, as if it had been stirred in its celestial bowl, slows down and stops. The Milky Way wriggles across the sky, invisible in this light, in this bay, but like a string somehow, that holds the beads of promise and purpose of this day and that day, of light and the ocean, all melting into each other as if that was their ultimate longing and intent. 

I scoff at such ideas of destinations as I wipe the sand off my feet, put my shoes back on and head away from the beach harbour, uphill, to the train station. But I don’t really. The magic of light and ocean stays with me on the train, on the rail bridge across the Firth of Forth, passing through the busy city and all the way home.

Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags in the distance

 I had picked up two stones from the beach, attracted by their colours, the grey-green and the reddish-maroon. It was only when I looked at them at home that I realised they were both fossils. One, a dinosaur skull

and the other, a stylish boot.