into the blue
Barns Ness, 9 August
Today hasn’t gone to plan. I was meant to be in Edinburgh this afternoon, primarily to get some new glasses (I can’t read a book in my current pair and screen time is just eyestrain, so, needs must) and also to get some groceries and to pop to John Lewis to buy some thread for a repair. But I find it hard going into Edinburgh these days - I say ‘these days’ but I have for a while. The train, the close proximity to people, the noise, the traffic, the busy shops - all of it. As an environment, this can feel overwhelming.
Given that I lived in the city for twenty three years, and close to the centre, in the heart of everything on a daily basis, this anxiety around urban trips has been an adjustment over the last few years, but it’s one that I’ve learned to accept. And in these past months, as my mental health has been challenged, and as I’ve redrawn the boundaries of what I can and can’t do, I’ve come to understand that some things, on some days, will be a hard pass. Some days I’m going to get up, with a plan and a train to catch, and have to accept a plan B, which brings me here. Because writing is always a good plan B when it comes to resetting my mind. Being outdoors down the coast is the best reset, yoga is also a good one, but sometimes just sitting down to write is what’s needed.
Which brings me to this walk on a bright, blue-skied day, starting from Whitesands and heading to Barns Ness and on towards Torness. I’ve mentioned before that you’ll be seeing this lighthouse a lot here over the coming months, but I hadn’t intended to share this walk from early August as I didn’t feel that it was ‘enough’ for a post. The sky was too blue for photos in the first half (to my eye anyway), and as the light faded there was none of the drama I might have hoped for, until the return stretch, as we passed the lighthouse on the way back to Whitesands and the sky just blazed with light - only I captured this on video rather than photos.
But this walk felt good. It was breezy, and when it’s windy here, in this exposed spot, you feel it. There’s no escaping the weather here, and perhaps that’s also why I’m so drawn to coastal walks. A sheltered woodland walk can bring calm, but a wind-blasted coastal walk almost doesn’t leave space for whatever anxiety you’re carrying. Whether it’s the movement in the grasses whipping around you or the sand that’s picked up and flung along the shore (and often in your face), your senses are fully absorbed in those moments.
And while, for me, my senses feel overwhelmed by that urban noise of traffic and people and by all the hard edges of a city, I’m drawn to this sensory overload when outdoors. I lean into it. One is fraying, unsettling, draining; the other is grounding.
So those new specs will have to wait for another day. I’ll leave you with these photos of Barns Ness lighthouse, photographed from the shore and further along the dunes, and one image of Torness gleaming in the low sunlight. Even as I post this, I realise that the latter image feels really out of place here. Do I leave it in or take it out? But that’s the thing about this particular walk: Torness nuclear power station does feel out of place in this context. There’s no way round this. But there it is, until 2028, when this ageing nuclear plant is due to be decommissioned. One day, some years from now, this view will have changed - and for the better.
Barns Ness, East Lothian, 9 August 2024.
#barnsness #eastlothian #scotland
