Where all manner of human nature takes place, away from modern life

COME the dawn, he is there, hoodied, booted, his hands in the deep pit of the frontal pockets of the sweater, stamping the hard sand to keep the circulation going in his feet.

He’s all set up, his two fishing rods rooted in the beach, standing in slanted parallel, waiting for the sea to deliver.

No bait-gatherers this morning. Too early in the season for that. But the fisherman comes at the weekend in the most bitter of weather and circles in the sand until he makes a catch. No curiosity about the old smuggler’s cave; this is work, not leisure. Food, not sport.

An hour later, the tide is on the turn when he packs his gear and climbs up to where his battered van is parked, stepping aside to let a couple scramble past him down to the beach.

The man has thick white hair, the woman a Ribena-coloured bob. Difficult, at a distance, to judge the ages. North of 50, south of 60? They walk together but don’t hold hands. These two don’t have the bored forward gaze of the long-married. Second relationship, perhaps? They look to each other as they talk, except when they glance ahead to see that they’re not walking into a boulder. He’s holding forth, describing something, gloved hands in flight, describing big squares in the air and finally collapsing them.

She stops to laugh, so unwound by the story that she holds on to her knees and her eyes squeeze shut. He waits for her, delighted by the response. They walk to the rock boundary of the sand before turning to go back the way they came. Halfway across, they kiss without embracing. He stands, hands in pockets. She clasps her hands behind her, Montgomery-style.

The sun, sitting fat and pale on the horizon, puts a long faint shadow behind them.

Their Opel, leaving the viewing point, is replaced by a nail varnish red Beetle as the parking lot begins slowly to fill. Many of the new arrivals stay put in their vehicles. Especially the ones on their own, who push the driver’s seat back to give space for the Sunday paper to be read in a small space filled with the smell of garage coffee. One man, as he drives away, does an overarm toss of his crushed coffee beaker in the general direction of the local authority rubbish container.

The confident, fluid, don’t-even-need-to-slow-the-car movement of an old athlete. He misses. An older woman headed for the cliff walk picks up his detritus and bins it with an air of furious virtue and general reproach.

Most of those who leave their cars are people who Do the Walk. They know its length. They have a set pace. They don’t stop to pick flowers or admire the scenery. They pass bunches of lads horsing around swearing at each other with an unspoken but evident tsk tsk. They will return later, retracing their steps. Gloves off. Scarves loosened. Blood fizzy inside them, faces flushed with wind burn and pride.

Down on the beach, it’s less serious. Its visitors are not there to invest in their health dividend. Sometimes, they turf vast sad-eyed golden retrievers into the water and watch as the dogs head towards Ireland’s Eye, heads creating a broadening V-shaped wave behind them. At the same point, something in their canine brains reminds them that they got into this liquid stuff in pursuit of a ball (or sometimes a thrown, stoppered, empty water bottle) and they’d better locate it and head home.

By noon, there’s real warmth in the sun and a woman with three boys is on the beach.

Younger than teenagers, the three, socks and shoes off, chasing the diminishing waves and then running screaming from them as they return. They leave the water and line up in front of the woman. Unmistakable, the dance of pleading they do. She glances around furtively and then nods. They tear off T-shirts and trousers and run into the sea in their underwear, thrilled and shocked by the cold of it, taking their skinny legs out of it like storks, rising up high to keep their shoulders dry when the waves come. One sits down and lets a wave hit him amidships and the others copycat. Within minutes, the woman has them out again, elbows sharp-angled, hands in armpits. She doesn’t get them to put their trousers back on, just wraps anoraks around them and gestures them in front of her up the hill towards the waiting car.

By afternoon, a family has set up on the rocks that have emerged as the sea retreats. Apart from the baby buggy, their gear could be from the 50s. Just a few years back, visitors to this beach carried beehive tents that sprang open at a throw, hibachis big enough to cook for hundreds, and those lie-down couches with a cushioned gap at the front to allow the sunbather to read without getting a crick in their neck. All that seems to have disappeared and we’re back to rugs, towels, ordinary umbrellas, and sandwiches in tinfoil.

The man in the family seemed to be carrying a smaller baby than the one in the buggy, but when he puts it down, it turns into a mad little grey and brown terrier that runs in crazily delighted circles, closely followed by the tottering tot released from the buggy. A stout older woman sits on a rug, her back to the rest, and reads a book bent back on itself while the younger woman raises a bath towel by the corners like a protest placard and walks forward on the lower section to get it flat, unwrinkled. She lifts her ponytail for the man to anoint the back of her neck with sun cream. He searches the rocks, hindered by the help offered by the child and the dog, returning with four big stones to hold the towel down against the wind.

Other than the faint barks of delight from the tiny dog, the beach is quiet, enlarged now by the dark sodden stretch left as the tide went out. No ghetto blasters. Not even the heavy-duty lawnmower noise of the search and rescue helicopter. Out on the sea, like a decoration, one white-sailed yacht.

WANDERERS on the beach are untethered. No white flexes attached to earphones, no heads angled to mobile phones. It’s as if every one of them decided to reject the imperative urgency of the day’s broadcast hostilities and listen, instead, to the relentlessly repetitive sound of waves breaking; the heartbeat of the world.

When the shadows lengthen and the tide makes its return, the family on the rocks go through the old familiar rituals. Shaking the sand off the towel, rolling and stowing it. Wrapping a rug around the sleeping child in the buggy. Hefting bags over shoulders and walking heavily towards where the bus will stop.

One blackened rock becomes the focus for the cormorants after which it’s named. They preen and groom in a row across its top. The full tide is slate-grey as the sun sets.