I arrived an hour early and walked down to the beautiful beach and went for a swim (yes that really is it in the photo). I then dried myself off in the beach car park, with the car radio on as I listened to Andy Murray losing, valiantly, to Rafael Nadal. A more British experience would be hard to imagine. I walked up to the Studios to give the talk, watching a kid go beserk after dropping an ice cream and feeling the sand between my toes.

Whilst very vaguely on the subject of swimming, the Independent invited me to be on their Best 50 swimming spots in the UK panel. The results can be found here.

I adore the Witterings in winter, the barbecue and beach towels may have to stay at home but it is invigorating to get blown along on miles of abandoned sand. In between games of hide and seek amongst the beach huts, games of football on the sticky sand and races to pieces of seaweed, I noticed some interesting patterns in the sand.

This photo shows how there tend to be broad ripples parallel to the coastline itself, but closer inspection reveals more subtle patterns and these can be used to decipher the action of the water and therefore yield more clues to direction. The ripples of sand fan out over the small hills that are exposed at low water. There are tight-packed parallel ridges where the water action is uniform, but a more confused system of diamonds where incoming water meets the returning undercurrent from earlier waves. All of these patterns can be used by walkers in low visibility to orientate themselves, if the sound of the water is not helping, but they can also be used by divers searching for a clue to the direction of coast in low visiblity.

This is a photo taken looking out to the Fort from Longis Beach on the southeastern part of the island. Alderney is famous for its powerful tides and you can see how churned up the water is getting on the left halft of the picture, as it races across the causeway.

Back to reality. I am sometimes struck by how different it can feel walking in different directions along the same beach. Often this is because the wind goes from being on your back to being on your face, but there can be more solid reasons. At Climping where I was this morning the shingle is moved gradually and relentlessly eastwards by the waves. This forces it up against the groynes and means that if you walk east you are faced by gentle hills and sharp drops down, but when you turn around you walk down gentle down slopes and are faced with steep rises. In the legs it feels like a different beach altogether.