My Beautiful Coast

Whenever I start to talk to people who live some distance away about how I live in a small suburb of Liverpool and that we have a beautiful beach they look at me as though I have lost my mind. "You live near a big city with docks, your beach must be in your dreams!" When they eventually come to visit our coast they are always pleasantly surprised and often amazed that we have this small piece of heaven so close to a big city.

I have loved my beach since I was a small child. My mother and sister would pack a bottle of lemonade and sandwiches and off we would go for a day at the seaside with buckets and spades, collecting shells, looking for starfish. The magic and fun never ended.

My Dad would also take us down to the beach and he would tell us about all the ships coming and going, where they were from, where they were heading and the cargo they carried. He managed to make it all sound so amazing. He had been in the Royal Marines and sailed around the world but sometimes he would show me the ships and tell me how, when I grew up, they would take me anywhere I wanted to go and that I would see places that he had only dreamed of. Somehow I have made it to fifty and not sailed anywhere further than France but I do intend to rectify that and go visit some of the places my parents dreamed of.

As a teenager I used to go for beach picnics with my friends and sometimes, in the dead of winter, we would don wellies and waterproofs and go paddling in the rain while we put the world right and made future plans.

When I married I moved with my husband closer to our places of work and for four years I was unable to walk to my beach. I missed it so much. Moving back to Crosby was truly wonderful. It felt like a  real homecoming,even though we had lived a relatively short distance away. My husband loved the town immediately and asked me why I hadn't talked him into moving back much sooner.

We now have Antony Gormley's In Another Place on our beach and the Burbo Bank windfarm in the distance and, for someone who doesn't like change, I have been perfectly happy with both. The Iron Men are like family now. After all they do support the same football team as me. I have seen them wearing the shirts!

But above all my beach is my head-clearing place. Even now, when I have something to think about or my head needs clearing I go down there and, whether sunny or stormy, it sets me right. My sands, my waves - at least that's how it feels, constant and unchanging, always there waiting to wash my worries away.

I love my beach, if I have a spare ten minutes before I have to be there I drive down just to sit and look out across the bay at the ships coming and going and to see the waves rolling in. Maybe one day I'll buy a beach house to watch the sun rise and set there every day. In the meantime I go when I can and it always makes me feel welcome.