A picture in the sand

On this dull damp day in West Wales, the clouds hung heavy on the hills and there was a lowering sky over the sea. But Newport Sands is a beautiful beach at any time of year and I especially enjoy beach combing in the winter when rough winds and waves can transform the shoreline between one tide and the next, and all sorts of strange things ride in with the surf.

Sure enough I immediately spotted two jellyfish: a moon variety the size of a dinner plate, and a smaller pelagic jellyfish with trailing tentacles. Then I noticed that the outgoing tide had created an extraordinary effect upon the sand, producing a series of repeating patterns, dark and light, in some places like ruched curtains, in others like tongues of flame. It seemed as if a process akin to chromatography had been at work, sorting and separating the sand grains by weight and by colour (silver and grey) to leave a scroll of scribble on the strand.

The patterns swirled around any object lying on the beach and here is one such: a piece of seaweed detached along with its holdfast. To me it resembled a cartoon desert island with a single palm tree, caught in the eye of a raging hurricane. This is exactly as it was, I didn't alter what I found in any way and at home simply tweaked the image a little to improve the contrast. The sea and the sand supplied the artistry.