cromer beach

a day of misty rain, sudden heavy downpours  and weak sunshine breaking through.

at Cromer the misty rain mingled with the mist off the breakers and streamed up the cliffs, obscuring the strange pattern of glacial morraine.

clay and sand, chalk and flint, the marble cake mixture is exposed by fresh cliff falls

flint stratified chalk layers heaved up by the ice sheet, complete with orange capstone, tens of metres above the proper level of these beds, formed by uncounted trillions of tiny shelled creatures dying and falling to the bottom of an ocean for millenia.

out of the chalk in the cliff tumble countless flints which wash around on the beach in successive tides and storms.

out of the chalk platform on the beach huge nodules and circles of flint protrude, paramoudra and chalk circles, probably the hollows left by decaying sponges filled by silica. flint is pure silica, with a glass-like structure, crushed flint is still used as a glaze material by potters like me.

these huge stones are food for a potter’s thought’s with their random, fluid shapes and strange colourations.

chalk islands stand up amid sand and flint.

some kind of algae has left patterns in rust-red, green and ochre not unlike my copper/dolomite/tin glaze.

curious and beautiful objects; temporary arrangements of elemental decoration.

a chance juxtapostion – horse’s head, or dragon’s, with streaming seaweed mane.

this ear-shaped flint is segmented almost like an ammonite fossil.

a three hour walk got us almost to Sheringham and back.

a chalk pavement which might turn out to make another embroidery design.

the groynes are festooned with weed, like some monstrous row of spectators.

a rainbow as one shower gives way to a brief interlude of sunshine.

the faint impression of Cromer pier at the far end of the beach.

from the cliff above the shower cloud can be seen making a dark reflection across silver shimmering sea.