With the aim of getting to the beach before the sun rises, I have been late too many times. By the time the light wakes up my body clock, around 6.30 am, the sun is already gilding the paperbarks outside my window.
So I set the alarm for 5.30, dressed quickly, fast-walked along the dirt road to the beach…begging the sun to wait for me… and lo, I crested the small sandhill, to see this.
Dawn, but no actual sun up!
Mere seconds after I got to this long empty beach, the event began.… and moving fast.
As I could see the sun more fully, I was treated to a double sunrise in the wet sand mirror.
And here it was. Yet again, to gild and kickstart my day, to colour my world.
The show under way, I turned to the land to see the effects: watery sand gleaming, shells catching the light on the still-dark damp sand.
Like a true landlubber, I am as fascinated by what the sea has done to the land than what it is doing in its own restless surges.
The receding tide has left in hesitant stages, depositing scalloped ripples of plants and runners ripped both from sea and sand dunes.
Up close, there are also tiny grey pebbles of lava… from New Zealand, I am told!
My next ambition is to be present at a sunrise when the sky hold clouds to also receive that gilding, an even more spectacular show. Looks like that alarm awakening will be regular, so I can check for clouds… and get up… or go back to sleep.
Well, a country upbringing made me an early riser! Often wish I wasn’t…
I’ve never made the effort to capture a sunrise here over river which is closer than beach to me, so good on you.
I’ll leave it to the early risers, though most of the photo capture people down here do the sunset as obviously a much easier time to manage.