COUNTRY VIEWS
The sea is a profound element of British identity
The sea that surrounds us and our wonderful coastline is embedded in our national identity, says Sara Maitland.
A little south of Coton in the Elms in Derbyshire is Church Flatts Farm, which has the distinction of being the furthest place from the sea in the UK– it is 70 miles from the coast, or 45 miles from the nearest tidal water.
This is in contrast to the Dzoosotoyn Elisen Desert in China’s Xinjiang province, which, at 1,644 miles from the coast, is furthest from the sea anywhere in the world. Or, put another way, it would be well-nigh impossible in the UK, unlike many countries, to live further than a day trip from the seaside.
The sea means a great deal to a great many British people, emotionally and artistically. Partly, this may come from the fact so many of us went to the seaside for holidays and trips when we were young, and it is associated in our memories with both fun and family. Partly because the seas are profoundly tied up with our sense of national identity – beginning with the fact that every single British person is, in a real sense, an immigrant.
Although there may well have been humans in what is now Britain before the Ice Ages, they disappeared southward as the cold increased. When the ice retreated, Europeans migrated northwards into Britain (this was easier than it seems, because, until about 8,000 years ago, Kent was joined to Europe by a solid land bridge across what is now the Channel). More recently, the sea has protected us from invasion and we have ventured across it to find riches and empire in new worlds.
The connection seems to exist at so many levels. And moreover, our seas and shores are lovely.
RHYTHM OF THE TIDES
I grew up on a tidal estuary. About a mile north of Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, still within the huge tidal thrust of the Solway Firth, two rivers – the larger Dee and the smaller Tarff – meet, forming a sort of tidal lake with some boggy islands in the middle. Our home was just on the shore there, overlooking the endless tidal rhythm, which actively affected our lives. We could not take either our rowing boat or, later, our sailing dinghy out for quite a sizable part of the day, and that part, of course, changed as tides do from day to day. When we went to the beach we had to choose the time carefully – sometimes there was no beach. Sometimes the sea was too far away for little legs.
In my 50s, I went back to live at my childhood home for a couple of years and, perhaps for the first time, I became conscious that the movement of the tides affected not just the view, but the quality of the light as well. Sunlight, or even daylight, bouncing off wet, dark mud has a very different ‘feel’ from sunlight doing exactly the same thing off gently flowing water; the rhythm of the daylight combines curiously and – for me at least – very beautifully with the fluctuating rhythms of the tides.
Tides are genuinely mysterious, even magical. Until we understood clearly that the Earth both spins on its own axis and revolves around the sun, tidal movement was inexplicable. And moreover, because there is no tide in the Mediterranean, there is no mention of tides in the Bible or in Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythology. (Odysseus had plenty of problems trying to sail home from Troy, but none of them were caused by tidal pressures.)
Childhood joy, international protection, extraordinary complex beauty – and all are right at hand. Of course we love to be beside the seaside.
Have your say What do you think about the issues raised here? Write to the address on page three or email editor@countryfile.com