What remains?

Beach Journal 15th July 2026

West Pier, Brighton. 8am. 22°C, sunny and warm. Offshore breeze. Low tide coming in.

On Wednesday I come to Substack to catch up on Beth Kempton’s online writing retreat The Sea, The Sea.

It takes the promise of this to get me out of bed. I read and listen to the first parts of the retreat in soft morning light. I feel calmer and the morning sun taunts me a little to go outside. I don’t resist. Echoes of Beth’s gentle readings are in my mind as I navigate the many road crossings down to the beach.

Once there, I breathe a sigh of relief and drop down onto the stones near the water. The tide is out but turning. I long to get into the water but there’s no energy to rush.

I see a few swimmers far out, their arms flicking in and out of the water. A pale labrador disturbs a flock of gulls further up the beach which sends them squawking low over my head. The waves are gently hushing, pulsing towards the shore. I can feel a strong breeze on my back, waving my hair across my face. The stones under my bare feet are small and jagged.

Mental notes are taken before stepping down to the water’s edge, the cold foam rushing over my feet. I can see a sandy strip just ahead in the water and wade in for a more comfortable place to stand.

I let myself get used to the water temperature slowly before going in deeper. I don’t swim all year round and had cold shock when I was young after falling out of a kayak into the freezing March sea. (Thankful for the lifejacket and the instructor who got my skinny blue body out of the water!) My mind and body have never forgotten and while I love to be in the sea, I think I will always be wary, so we go slow.

Eventually I lift my feet from the firm sand and tread water under the sun. I swim a little in the shallow water but mostly float and roll around in the water like an otter. A mantra for the sea plays over in my head. May I be adaptable. May I be strong. May I flow.

The tide is coming in fast so back on the beach I dress quickly and go to the picnic tables at the top of the West Pier. It’s a great spot to journal. People stop often here to take pictures of the pier, it’s rusty orange glow looks beautiful against the blue sea and sky.

The words flow easily. Maybe it’s the view, or the swim, or Beth’s encouragement to write but I fill pages sitting at the beach. Then when it’s time for the next part of this retreat, I head home.

Only on the walk home do I realise that what I have written is really about the push and pull of the water. What the tide brings and takes away. The offerings of the sea, of life, what remains, and what it chooses to wash away.

The writing retreat continues. I write poems, a sort of draft for an essay that doesn’t go anywhere, pages of journaling and seeds of things. I get sucked into an internet scroll which I then regret.

The Sea, The Sea online retreat was easy and nurturing and at the end, I felt deliciously tired and a little sad to let it go.

I looked back through the days notes, marking anything that seemed worth coming back to, trying to figure out what to bring in and what to leave, what to let wash away.

There are many metaphors for life in the sea. Maybe that’s one of them.

What remains?

Written during The Sea, The Sea writing retreat with Beth Kempton.

You leave me gifts like you love me

but never stay for long and you can be cold.

I’ll admire the mermaid’s purses and the amber bladderwrack,

the driftwood you have rolled and refined so deeply.

Those plastic pieces you abandon

are no good to me, whatever the colour.

I will be one that cleans the salty fringes,

spots the limpet shells and the hagstones that you grind.

You will shape the shore and the shingle

with your breath and every hush.

I’ll still be waiting at the strandline

for your timely return by the moon.

~ Kore Sage