Weighed in the Water

Stormy Weather.....

Wells, Wells, Wells.......  It actually isn't too wet.  Here, at Wells-next-the-sea, North Norfolk, I am about to sail away.....  courtesy of Coastal Exploration Co.  

This isn't masochism....  I booked two different days out when we were suffering from the mediterranean delights of sunshine and heat.....  So I imagined that both these days on the water would be warm and easy....

So, last Sunday, on the twenty foot lug-rigged crab boat 'My Girls' built in Sheringham in 1965, Penny and I entrust ourselves to skipper Nick and set sail at dawn from the port of Wells....

It is a shining morning.  August has gone, and this is, to my dismay, September.  Cloudy.  Cool.  

A gleam across the salt marshes means that the day is waking up, but little stirs.....

It is quiet.  The tide is hurrying in, but no one else is up and about. Except for the young swallows, getting ready for their amazing migration to Africa. Here they are swooping and feeding on the early flies above the waters, and resting on a silent, empty boat.....

I think, uncertainly, that this is what I love.  I love to see the natural world at ease with itself.  I love to observe birds and animals showing us, unselfconsciously, how they live.  The scissoring flight (pace Ted Hughes) is spell binding:

The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer,

She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it,

She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.

Work and Play

Ted Hughes

Anyway.  This is not everything.  We sail out through the salt marshes,.  The light is low, and I haven't brought my big camera with the 500 mm lens, so we listen and watch and let be.  Sandpipers, oystercatchers, egrets, marsh harriers, redshanks, curlews and even whimbrel chatter and spin about, quick and fleeting across the dark levels of the marsh lands.  Sea blight, sea purslane, asters and lavenders, merge with samphire and wormwood, rooted in the thick mud banks.  The channels are scoured by the tides, but they are shallow, and we have to hug the outside of curves to stay afloat.....

On this, my second outing, we are in a 16 foot lug rigged mussel flat, built in about 1960.  

It is easy in the creeks and shallows, and we sail gently with the wind:

Ahead of us, almost a John Craske picture, My Girls tacks toward Blakeney Point to see the seals.....

And, despite our lack of keel and shallow draught, we attempt to catch up.....  To see the curious seals.....

And then, shore enuff, there they are, beached [Like Whales?  Ed] 

Stretched, virtually limbless, they are monstrous as they roll on the beach, but in the water they are peerless, able to disappear for long minutes, but bobbing up to question our place in the order of things:

Our sister ship has anchored, with the sail down, as they photograph the scene.  

We eye the weather, clouds gathering:

Battleship grey on the horizon:

Heavy clouds weighing down across the salt marshes.  I feel compressed, weighted down, the thick grey mass of wet sackcloth hanging above my head.....

There's a ragged clown out there, with heavy blue rain triggering feelings for the fishermen who daily wrestle with the elements to bring oily protein to our tables.....

And, even when the sky lightens, it is still a relief to be cruising home:

We shelter in a muddy inlet in the salt marsh to restore ourselves on Baron Bigod and whelks, soup and pork pie.....

And then it is time to slip back to our moorings in Wells.....

Where industrial shadows still hang over us, and some things somehow don't seem quite right:

But the crowds still love their crabbing:

It has been an adventure, and I am grateful to Nick and Alfie and all at Coastal Exploration Co. who made this possible. But also thanks to my companions on these brief explorations of the North Norfolk Coast.  It is an inspiring world, so different from that we see from the land, so quiet and so natural.  

And love to the seals......

I am watching you.....

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold

South by South-West (Part 2)

Light and Shade in St Ives (again)

I don't think I could tire of this view.  It is from one of the rooms of Podn Olva, where I stayed in 2023, and where I stayed again this year.....

Pednolva, St Ives by John Anthony Park ROI (1878-1962)

Christopher (Kit) Wood stayed in the little wooden bungalow (which then had no hot water or toilet) here in the grounds of the Pedn Olva House Hotel, in the autumn of 1926. He was inspired by the light and colour.  

Here is a view of the rocky point from the harbour:

Pednolver, St Ives by Arthur Hayward (1889-1962)

And here is a view of the harbour itself:

St Ives by Alfred Cochrane (c1871-1947)

All of which go to show that St Ives has been popular with artists for quite some time, and that the stardom that arrived with Barbara Hepworth in 1939 was really part of a continuum, which eventually led to the creation of Tate St Ives in June 1993, designed, with echoes of the former gasworks on the site, by architects Eldred Evans and David Shalev.  The gallery was then enlarged by cutting into the cliffs by Jamie Fobert Architects in 2017.

Tate St Ives is a wonderful gallery, catching the light from the sea across Porthmeor Beach, and hosting works by local artists that include Alfred Wallis, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.

And it was Barbara Hepworth who drew me here in March 2023 as the gallery was holding a major exhibition of her work then.  (For more about that please see:

 https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2023/03/a-brief-trip-to-st-ives-cornwall.html)

Stringed Figure (Curlew) Version II 1956, edition 1959, By Barbara Hepworth

I really like her work, and though the above example may be called Curlew, I see in it the curls and colours of waves, and also the head of a great fish.....

Trewyn Studio, now known as the Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, is almost as if Hepworth is still there.  Her studio has overalls hanging on the door,

And some of her tools are laid out as if she was about to start work....

Whatever her pieces are named, and whatever they are made of, I cannot help but feel the effect of the sea on them, the patient, timeless wear that creates smooth rocks and pebbles, but also the way that caves are formed, the way the incessant washing of the ocean sculpts forms where it meets the land.....

Hepworth's is a garden of earthly delights. A place to while away a sunny day in the shade of some glorious tree, musing on the turning of the world, the pull of the moon and sun, and the swish of the nearby sea.

Then, halfway between Trewyn and the Tate we find a tiny cottage, marked with a humble plaque.

This was the home of Alfred Wallis, who moved here with his wife in 1912, when he was 67.  Three years later Susan died, and Alfred took up painting, with household paints and bits of cardboard.  He painted from memory, scenes from his maritime experience as a young man. 

P.Z. 11 by Alfred Wallis c 1928

He never had tuition but his talent was recognised by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood when they chanced by on a day trip to St Ives in 1928.

The Blue Ship, c1934, by Alfred Wallis (1855-1952)

There is a similarity in Alfred's story to that of John Craske (see, if you will,

 https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2026/04/life-and-death-and-love-and-loss-on.html)

but, with respect to St Ives, it was his influence on Christopher Wood that was most significant.  As Sebastian Faulks describes in The Fatal Englishman, Wallis's work persuaded Wood to narrow his range of colour..... [and] what he really offered him was a renewed childlike directness.....

Cornish Fishermen, The Quay, St Ives, 1928 by Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

Christopher Wood died in Salisbury in 1930; Alfred Wallis lasted until 1952, and is buried in Barnoon Cemetery, overlooking Porthmeor Bay.  His grave is covered in ceramics by another artist who took up residence in St Ives, the potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979)....

St Ives is an enchanting place. Despite the changes brought about over the years by motor transport and the influx of tourists (like me) it still lives and breathes as a real place rather than as some kind of artificial Disneyworld.  The ever-changing Atlantic that ebbs and flows in and out of the harbour and over the sand and the rocks, the abundance of wildflowers on the island and along the coast, and the way the light rises and falls, shimmers and blurs, sparkles and fades - these all contribute to the magical appeal....  If I were an artist I would never cease to paint it from sunrise to dusk, through rain and mist and blazing cloudless heat.

Yes, if I could I would probably try and paint something like this, from a room in Pedn Olva:

Setting Sun Across The Bay, Albert Julius Olsson (1844-1942)

The town of St Ives has long been an artistic hub, attracting artists since the time of J M W Turner. They were attracted to Cornwall because of the beauty of the landscape and the quality of natural light. From the 1940s a circle of artists working in modern styles grew around St Ives. They contributed to international debates and developments in painting, sculpture and architecture, becoming pioneers of modern art. From this small Cornish fishing town, artists changed the international landscape of art, and of homes, towns and cities through their influence on subsequent generations of artists, designers, architects and makers. (From the Tate St Ives website).

I will go again.....

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South by Southwest [Shome mishtake?  Ed]
but it's all about the sculpture.....

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Dedicated to Eva Marie Sainte (who will be 102 on July 4th) and to my travelling companion

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