The lowest tide of spring, and the gully that filled first
The biggest tides of the year come around the equinoxes, and the table for the last Sunday in March gave low water at a quarter to one, with a height of just 0.2 metres. On an ordinary tide the bottom of our ledges never shows. On this one the sea drew back far enough to uncover the kelp, lying flat across the rock like wet brown leather, and I wanted to be standing at the edge of it when the water stopped.
I started down at eleven, following the water out rather than racing it. The top of the shore is barnacles and limpets, then a broad belt of brown wrack that slides about underfoot, then bright green weed, which is the worst footing of all. Bare rock with a dusting of sand is the only surface I trust, and I pick my way from patch to patch. At about twenty to twelve I stepped across a gully between two ledges, a channel perhaps four metres wide with a sandy floor that was completely dry.
The hour at the bottom was worth the walk. Under the kelp there were cushion stars no bigger than a coin, a sea hare grazing on red weed, and beneath one large boulder an edible crab with a shell nine centimetres across, which I looked at without lifting and covered again with the weed it had been sheltering under. I lost track of time, as I always seem to at the lower edge.
I turned back at twenty past one, thirty-five minutes after low water, thinking I had plenty of time. The gully had other ideas. It lies lower than the ledges on either side, and the flood had found it before anything else: water was pouring in from the seaward end, ankle deep when I arrived and over my knees by the time I reached the far side. It came to nothing worse than wet jeans and a cold walk home, but an hour later it would have been a different story.
What I changed. I now set an alarm for the time of low water and start back when it rings, not when the water visibly turns. On the way out I note every gully I cross, because the way back is only as safe as its lowest point. And on the biggest tides I go down with a friend, as I ought to have done from the start.