TIME AND TIDE

We went to Menai twice during our week on Anglesey this year. Once on a weekday lunchtime at high tide, and again on the following Sunday morning when the tide was just about as low as it gets and, to be frank, we were actually utterly startled by the contrast.

The first time the waters had been lapping gently at the very lip of the defensive walls and threatening to spill over onto the path where we were sitting as we watched the tiny islands in front of us shrink down to nothing as the waters rose around them, causing the birds that had settled upon them to finally give it up as a bad job and take to the air in search of other, dryer, perches.

As the water softly lapped against the stone on that serene July day, we managed to avoid engaging all that much with both the many children which had been brought there for an educational visit, and the passing dog-walkers who passed by, and merely took the time to enjoy the moment and reflect upon the  efforts that must have gone into constructing the "Belgian Promenade" upon which we were sitting, which was built by Belgian refugees who had to flee their homes due to invasion and found food and shelter amongst the Menai community.

The second time we arrived the scene almost resembled one of those old photographs taken of battlefields with nothing but sodden mud where once the waters had been, and we were able to see a strange - usually submerged - wall of rock and silt which each day must resemble (on a much smaller scale, obviously) what  the straits of Gibraltar must have looked like on that day back somewhere in the depths of geological time when the Atlantic broke through again, and the waters of the Atlantic finally broke through and flooded what we now call the Mediterranean Sea.

But the waders seemed to like it there and, whilst it did immediately resemble a scene of almost total devastation, the place was teeming with life of all sorts and, furthermore, this was all very fascinating to observe before we headed home because, of course, time and tide wait for no-one, and the fact that holidays have to end is almost as predictable as the tides themselves.