Where is the best sea view?

...that region, gazing down to where jagged headlands and islets thrust up through the Tyrrhenian waves. When the sea is at peace and the waves are stilled, the water becomes almost luminous, the colour of the rock beneath seeming to amplify its limpid blue.

Limestone is a rather good material for this kind of shorescape, combining light-reflective colouring with a soluble tendency to let the sea shape it into hollows, blow-holes and ...
...Malta; on the Dalmatian coast, where the mountains rear up to overshadow the Adriatic; in the Calanques inlets south of Marseille; and on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea. “Blue caves” and “blue grottos” abound in such places, providing local boatmen with employment carrying tourists out to marvel at them. The sea is too rough for outings of this kind at Punakaiki on the wild west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, and the limestone there is ... more

“I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky.” (John Masefield)

Never fear; I’m not about to start waxing lyrical about the sea. I’m more in the Irving Berlin camp than in the Masefield. I quote the lines above to illustrate the fact that even the most feverish of fanatics for the sea has to admit that maritime views are limited, consisting as they do of just two lonely elements: water and sky. And it’s stretching a point to include the sky, which can equally be seen above land as above sea. So, essentially, we’re talking about water.

Water, it might be argued, is not entirely monotonous to look at. The sea has moods, which it expresses in the colour of its complexion. Sometimes, it can be a tranquil turquoise, sometimes an inscrutable indigo, sometimes a grudging greeny-grey. Occasionally, it rears up in wilful white humps and spits spume.

That, though, is about the extent of its variety. Sea views only really become interesting when they include other things to see besides the sea. Shipping, for example, seabirds, whales or dolphins and, above all, shores. Artists understand this. Even Turner seldom just painted the sea, usually focussing his compositions on a glimpse of coastline or a boat or two. Seascapes that include ships are not really sea views at all, but pictures of ships. Anyone who has ever been on a voyage knows that as long as there is land in sight people will be out on deck gazing at it; as soon as it disappears they turn their attention inboard. Once on its own, the sea is tactfully ignored. Extended scrutiny would only draw embarrassing attention to its lack of charm.

Fortunately, the sea’s deficiencies are more than made up for by the visual appeal of the shores. By a kind of paradox the sea, though boring in itself, acts as a catalyst to transform almost any view of land. It does so not just by adding an extra feature, but by adding movement and mood to an otherwise unmoving landscape. Coastlines are fascinating, offering wonderful vistas that come in many shapes and sizes:

Rocks and rollers

Since this review was prompted by memories of the Amalfi coast, let us begin atop one of the many limestone crags that decorate that region, gazing down to where jagged headlands and islets thrust up through the Tyrrhenian waves. When the sea is at peace and the waves are stilled, the water becomes almost luminous, the colour of the rock beneath seeming to amplify its limpid blue.

Limestone is a rather good material for this kind of shorescape, combining light-reflective colouring with a soluble tendency to let the sea shape it into hollows, blow-holes and caves. Among many locations, you find it also around Malta; on the Dalmatian coast, where the mountains rear up to overshadow the Adriatic; in the Calanques inlets south of Marseille; and on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea. “Blue caves” and “blue grottos” abound in such places, providing local boatmen with employment carrying tourists out to marvel at them. The sea is too rough for outings of this kind at Punakaiki on the wild west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, and the limestone there is of a darker hue, but still fascinating for its curiously moulded “pancake” form. I’d definite recommend taking a look next time you’re in that area.

It doesn’t have to be limestone, though. Without getting too geological, there are plenty of other rocks that have their own appeal. If you’re visiting the northern coast of Brittany, take the trail round the little cape west of Perros-Guirec known as the Sentier des Douaniers (“customs-officers’ footpath”, though you’d be unlucky to encounter any on your way). The predominant rock here is granite – “rose granite” officially, though the colour is more a ruddy ochre that a floral pink. Either way, it’s hard, unyielding stone, but millions of years of storms and tides have crashed and carved it into bizarre configurations, and continue imperceptibly to do so every day. Along the way can be found innumerable places to pause and watch the water at work, surging over rough outcrops before gurgling back through time-smoothed fissures, while you imagine fanciful interpretations for the sculpted shapes thus formed.

Cliff hangers

In England we tend to think of cliffs as sheer white chalk headlands of the kind to be found awaiting bluebirds at Dover – or the Seven Sisters, or Beachy Head – and very impressive they can be, from a distance. The trouble is that when they are so white and overbearing that they draw the eye up away from the sea, and away from its movement and its sound. In my view, chalk cliffs are most impressive when they break up and intermingle with the waves, as with the Needles at the pointed end of the Isle of Wight.

In any case, cliffs don’t have to be large and chalky. Take a look at the basalt headland in Northumberland on which the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle stand, not hugely high, but hugely atmospheric. At first glance the dark cliffs that rise from the pounding sea seem sheer, though thousands of kittiwakes have found purchase enough to nest on tiny ledges, their cries as they wheel around audible even above the wind and the breaking rollers on the rocks below.

More majestic volcanic cliffs are to be found on the north coast of Madeira, though here they are softened by green growth that manages to find a foothold almost as precarious as that of the kittiwakes at Dunstanburgh. Elsewhere too, examples abound. The sandstone and shale cliffs of Moher in Ireland are also said to be magnificent by those who know them, but I have unimaginatively decided to limit this review to sea views that I have seen personally, so I can’t include them here.

Son of a Beach

Rather like the sea itself, beaches on their own don’t make for great views. Flat and sandy – or, worse still, pebbly – where’s the grandeur or subtlety in that? Beaches need props or surrounding scenery to make them interesting: sea life or rocky outcrops on the foreshore, a backdrop of tangled vegetation or steep slopes behind. The best of all beaches nestle in coves, and you have to pick your way down to them by steep footpaths, catching views from different angles as you descend. This gives you a chance of finding them deserted on arrival too; other people seldom improve the scenic quality of anywhere.

If only it were not so absurdly overcrowded, Britain would be a good place to find such beaches – in Cornwall, for example, and in many places down the west coasts of Scotland and Wales. A family favourite of ours for many years was Druidston Haven in Dyfed, which has a small hotel of great character on the clifftop at which to stay, but no other habitations for some miles. Even though such refuges can still be found here, it’s probably better to go overseas. The north-west Pacific coast of the USA is very good for beaches, Oregon in particular, where you can often find sandy bays surrounded by rugged rocks, with only a few sea lions and pelicans for company.

Desert island dusks

If you’re really determined to see the sea from a beach, the best time to do so is at dusk, when you can enjoy to the full the reflected glory of the setting sun. For this, you obviously need a west-facing beach, and ideally one in the tropics, where, for reasons that escape me, the sun looks larger than in more temperate latitudes and its setting colours more intense. Never book an easterly-oriented beach hotel, unless you want to miss the best moment of the day, which is sipping a sundowner while you watch the heavenly body imitate the heavenly drink. (Note to any puzzled or outraged Australians reading this: in British usage, a sundowner is the first alcoholic beverage of the evening, not a tramp.)

I have been fortunate enough to see some stunning setting-sunscapes in my time: in Fiji, in Sri Lanka, in the Galapagos. But best of all is the sunset as observed from the beachfront of the East Winds Inn at La Brelotte Bay in St Lucia. This is not just because the beach is quiet and secluded, and fringed with palm fronds to frame the view – though it is. Nor is it just because Caribbean sunsets are particularly resplendent in the kaleidoscopic range of their colours and the cloud formations that tend to rear up from the evening horizon into an otherwise clear sky to lend shape and shadow to the display – though they are. It is also because as many of the hotel’s cocktails – or beers, or glasses of champagne – as you desire are covered by the all-inclusive tariff, and because you know that the French chef will be preparing something truly delicious from fresh local ingredients for dinner afterwards. How many other views can compete with that?

“Where every prospect pleases….”

“….and only man is vile.” Having mentioned Sri Lanka, I am reminded of these misanthropic words, which were penned by a certain Bishop Huber, a missionary in Ceylon, about his diocese. When it was pointed out to him that this was rather poor PR, he sought to put a safe distance between himself and any vengeful islanders by pretending he’d meant Java all along. In fairness to the nasty old hypocrite, he did have a sort of point. Human beings sometimes muck up nature’s work beyond all recognition or endurance, as on the Costa del Sol.

At other times, though, the man’s efforts add as well as subtract. One thinks again of the Amalfi coast, with villages clinging like limpets to cliffsides, or Cornish fishing villages hiding crab-like in the fissures of tiny coves. Despite man’s best efforts to make them so, seaside resorts need not be ugly; take a look at Sveti Stefan on the Croatian coast. Even industrial ports can have a perverse kind of charm. Viewed from the surrounding hills, would Swansea Bay be more or less impressive without the city and Port Talbot steelworks? It might be more beautiful, but at the same time offer less of interest to engage the eye.

Nor does every natural coastal prospect please. Bayous, marshes and mangrove swamps hold little appeal, for me at least, even in the unlikely event that they prove to be uninfested with mosquitoes, snakes or crocodiles. And at the opposite extreme, rocky shores where arid desert confronts an equally inhospitable ocean – perhaps in northern Chile or Namibia – such seascapes I would expect to find in hell, if hell has a coastline.

Shore to please

Well, after all that I really haven’t come up with a best sea view, have I? It’s a bit like asking for one’s favourite book or favourite film; it is simply unfair to exclude so many worthy contenders by opting for a single favourite. But I do feel I ought to make some kind of recommendation, so here is one – or rather, a sequence of several – and after all that globe-trotting, it can be found comfortably, if a bit parochially, close to home.

Cross the Sandbanks ferry from the ugly and overpriced headland of the same name to the Isle of Purbeck and stride off down the South West Coast Path that begins on the far side. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to walk the full 630 miles. For the first few miles you will be on the beaches of Shell Bay and Studland Bay, between the dunes and the sea. As you know, I’m not too wild about beach views and this one is not improved by the nudists, who are mostly ugly, male and not worth looking at. It is enormously improved, though, on a clear day by the Needles of the Isle of Wight looming out to sea in the east and by the mirror-image chalk cliff spikes known as Old Harry and his Wife, adding drama to the point of the headland up ahead.

Once past Old Harry and round the point, you have entered the World Heritage Site known as the Jurassic Coast. The first stretch doesn’t look in any way prehistoric, as gaze down at the small and inoffensive seaside resort of Swanage, nestling in its bay, with two further headlands beyond – Peveril Point and Durleston Head. After you have reached the latter, you find the path turns west along the top of limestone cliffs, which you can see curve away to a further headland some miles onwards. Before you reach it, several deep coves indent the coast, notably at Dancing Ledge and Winspit, with its disused quarries for Purbeck Stone, which my children still insist are smugglers’ caves. On up to the top of St Aldhelm’s Head, with its wind-buffeted chapel and spectacular vistas along the coast to either side, then down to the perfectly formed semi-circular beach at Chapman’s Pool.

Onwards over some steep ridges – exhausting to climb but worth it for the views – to Kimmeridge Bay, which is an outcrop of a different, and truly Jurassic, geology. Here the beach is surrounded by shale and compacted clays, rich in fossilised sea life such as ammonites. You are not allowed to dig, but erosion releases them in any case and they can often be picked up on the beach after a storm. The oily texture of the rock at Kimmeridge means that, unlike most of this coastline, it is not particularly beautiful, but it does provide another perspective through which to ponder on the shoreline and on man’s relationship with the sea. You could, of course, continue along the cliffs to many more fine viewpoints and perspectives, but you have probably done enough walking, and seen sufficient sea views, for one day.

Why are sea views – or rather, shore views – so hypnotic? Is it just the mesmeric motion of the waves as they finally find their way to land, simultaneously stimulating and soporific? Is it that we are reminded that all terrestrial life originated in the ocean, including our own? Is there a kind of comfort to be found in the knowledge that the sea has been pounding shores since long before men set foot on land, and will doubtless still be doing so long after we are forgotten? Somehow, the timeless taste of salt spray in the air and the chorus of wind and seagulls put in perspective the transience and triviality of our everyday concerns.

© torr 2009

 

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