What does the beach mean to you…? Here’s where you can submit your own video, audio or text answer, some of which are posted below. For film and audio, please say hello to manonabeach®, mentioning your first name, the beach and region, as well as the country if you’re outside the UK. There are examples on the guest answers page.
To send a text answer or to get in touch, please email: manonabeach@gmail.com
“What does a beach me to me?” – Fresh air, freedom, escape-ism, relaxation. I love the sound of the waves and the smell of salty air. I love walking along the same sandy beach daily/regularly to see how it changes [tide in, tide out, sunny, dreich, changing through of seasons, filled with people or (prefereably) empty and all to myself and my thoughts, stormy, quiet, grey, blue, windy, calm, filled with washed up shells or maybe even seaweed…]. Good beaches: Sandwood Bay, Gullane, Luskintyre Harris, Sanna Bay Ardnamurchan, North Beach/Balmedie/Sands of Forvie Aberdeen, West Sands St Andrews.
Am so excited by your travels! My family and I love to visit beaches and we are hoping that you will visit our very favourite beach, Lunan Bay, just past Arbroath. Its such an amazing, serene, picture postcard beach, a wonderful place to enjoy! Anyway, we hope you get there and if you do, we hope you enjoy it as we do!
From Emma & Colin, Caelan (11) and Arran (6) x
Ann Nixon – just lovely. Well, the beach means to me very happy childhood memories, racing the 3 miles to get there and then running straight into the water, no hanging about. We learned at a very early age to just run straight in as that is best, as it’s the Atlantic and damn cold but so refreshing. Ahh, happy memories! Thanks girls for the reminder.
Beaches mean different things,according to which ones- sand in sandwiches, windy windbreaks struggling to protect, furtive costume- changing…all ACTIVITIES.
But the overwhelmingly important aspect of the beach for me is the POWER of the sea in all it’s majesty.
I gain great strength from looking at the sea, asking it crucial, all-important questions about life. The beach is the wonderful junction between me on its stage, and the sea with its infinite horizon.
That’s why I’ve chosen to live 5 minutes from it.
What I love about your project is that I get to know the people of Great Britain better, as I visit its shorelines and beaches at your website. Truly universal but also particular, every beach has a flavor all its own but still can be called ‘the beach’. Who doesn’t love https://manonabeach.com/ …?
The beach to me means simply home, as am always happy on one. Wherever that has been that I’ve lived or visited. Very lucky, long, beautiful SW Scotland coastline. Also love Cornwall, Wales and little islands or peninsulas. Lovely site to share this love with others. Will try to make a video of my changing bay.
I just wanted to suggest you go to the beach at Crosby just north of Liverpool where Anthony Gormley’s wonderful sculptures of 100 men (called Another Place) stand on the beach looking out to sea. Kath and I have been several times and it is a magical place, great skies, the tide coming in and submerging many of the men, the bits of clothing and headgear draped on them (plus the barnacles that cover their skins) and the waders on the tide edge….and also the Liverpool skyline and docks to the south, the ships going by and the distant Welsh mountains. Being totally absorbed by wildlife for more years than we care to remember, we have been to many beaches, favouring those with few or preferably no people, just the sea, the beach, the sky and the birds, seals, otters and even whales……the Crosby beach does have a wild aspect and many birds too though it is of course dominated by the sculptures. Other great beaches are on the Uists.
We are linked in a way to the beach from our central location in Derby where a pair of peregrine falcons nest high on the city’s cathedral tower, watched via web cams by people all over the globe (www.bit.ly/derbyblog).
The falcons have a wide prey spectrum, including taking estuary and shore birds as they migrate over Derby at night time (using the floodlighting). The species we have found include knot, godwits, turnstones and dunlin as they migrate from east to west in autumn and visa versa in spring – that’s our connection with the beach and the sea even though we are about as inland as you can get. Oh and in 2007 we found the remains of an arctic tern that had been ringed by Swedish ringers as a chick five years earlier on a small island in the Baltic, linking us with a beach even further away!
Via Twitter – The beach is peace of mind – home – magical edge between worlds seen and unseen – FUN! And a treasure to protect.
Having lived all my life within a few miles of the beach, and having a father who comes from the Shetland Islands I think it is completely in my blood. I almost get slightly anxious if I have not been ‘to the edge’ in a while. The beach has always been a place of safety, of retreat in bad times. A haven in fun times. A thinking space, a creative space, somewhere to clear my head. To just sit and be. It is my go to place. I have so many memories of the beach it is hard to pick out my favourite times, but I think the time my fiancé and myself bought two comfortable chairs, and took them down to the beach for the first time is certainly one of them. We are getting on a bit and the rug on the sand was just not cutting it anymore, so we invested in the chairs. We always BBQ and have a bottle of fizz handy and on this occasion we took our wet suits and had a moonlight swim, which was magical. After the swim, BBQ and fizz we fell asleep in the chairs, it was a warm balmy night, and I woke up to a pitch black sky filled with stars, three hours later. We somehow gathered all our stuff together and walked home feeling elated and alive.
Colona beach, Cornwall – a calm place to swim on a summer’s day and a good place to spot a seal if you’re lucky. Next to the white houses of Chapel Point, the water is always clear and the boats of Mevagissey can be seen rounding the headland.
For me the beach is a place for healing, meditation and appreciation. The elements are at their strongest where land meets sea and it’s here I feel most at home. To swim I enjoy Cornwall, to walk it’s got to be Wales and for a “spiritual get away from it all beach” you can’t beat North Norfolk, there’s something so special about this area.