The Sea, The Sea!

As a child I loved the sea, and wanted to be near it - luckily for me, I was. There was a little cove with a sandy beach just a mile's walk from my home.

My holidays were spent even nearer to a beach in Northumberland; colder water, but nicer sand...

My favourite family day out was to go somewhere and visit... another beach.

All this ended when we moved to Somerset. At first I did not recognise my peril, because we were not many miles from the coast - but after we had visited the nearest beach...

And the biggest and most famous beach/ mud-flats

I began to feel hemmed-in, almost suffocated by the lack of decent, acceptable beaches - beaches became a thing purely of holidays.

And so things remained until, on the threshold of adolescence, I discovered Tolkien - and my allegiance switched to... Woods and Forests!