Slap and trickle

Last time I visited to my secret beach I blipped a stone face that I couldn't even find today.
This time I want to try and convey what makes this place special for me.

Here I'm looking across the curve of the bay to where an enormous rocky bastion guards its eastern end and adds to a feeling of enclosure.
It may be this that helps to create the unusual acoustic properties of the bay, or it maybe because the foreshore is solid bedrock without sand or gravel to muffle the sound of the water.
But whenever I come here on a summer day I am mesmerised by the sea's movement and the liquid harmonies that accompany it. Small waves lap and slop and gurgle, then splish and hiss as the tide advances inch by inch across the pebbles, carrying with it a soggy hem of loose seaweed. As the water moves in and out, irregularly regular like gentle respiration, it seems to wash your conscious thoughts away just as the surface of the rock has been scoured smooth.

In the background, a warbler sings in the thicket below the cliffs, a raven croaks somewhere and a small detachment of oystercatchers pipe in unison as they fly across the bay. A sheep bleats in the field above and the distant hum of a fishing boat on the horizon drifts inland. All comprise a soundscape that could not be orchestrated with deliberate intention.

But now I read that
A new installation by sound artist Bill Fontana will replace the noise from the gridlocked traffic on the Euston Road in Central London by the sound of waves breaking onto pebbles with White Sound: an urban seascape. One of London's most polluted urban thoroughfares will be transformed with a live sound feed from Chesil Beach in Dorset, at the Wellcome Foundation. Pedestrians will find themselves enveloped by the sounds of waves, which will be projected onto the street. The river of cars, buses and lorries will continue its slow progress, but the noise of engines and horns will be muted by the imported seascape.

Chesil Beach, a notorious shingle bank, might be able to compete with London traffic noise but the sound of my secret beach, never.