Time and tide

The warm weather has allowed the late painting of the beach hut. Usually it gets done before autumn has set in but, luckily, the weather has been kind to a lazy blog writer.

The beach

The huts are a feature of our beach dating back, at least, to the Victorian era. Technically, they are called “bathing huts”and  may have been first built when sea bathing became fashionable in the 18^th century.

Our wonderful sandy beach has a lesser, shingly companion hidden behind a large knowe or hillock. In Edwardian times,this was known  as “the men's beach”. The enclosing rocks make the waves stronger and the depth allows for diving. The young callants could pit themselves against the sea and each other without upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the matrons and maidens on the main beach who might otherwise catch a glimpse of an unclad male leg.

A few of the huts are possibly a hundred years old, built with seasoned timbers by local shipwrights to withstand all the North Sea and Scottish climate could throw at them.

A safe distance for male bathing!

Old sepia photos exist of large-hatted, billowy -frocked matrons with parasols supervising their offspring on the sands in years before WWI .

Most of the huts are now later editions as is our own one, replacing the original which finally succumbed to the elements many years ago. The sea- and wind- facing frontage soaks up preservative like blotting paper.

The full moon has produced a spring tide – a spring tide in November - nothing to do with the seasons, just a name for the big difference between high and low tides. The sea was far off as I painted the hut door, too far for the surfers who would come back to enjoy the waves as the tide rushed back in.

Surfers

The moon is the Hunter's Moon. Each full moon has its own name. The next will be the Moon before Yule and so the annual cycle continues as it has done for millennia, from before the beach huts, before the people, even before the beach itself existed. The tide surging in and retreating out, obeying the commands of the Moon.