Cleethorpes - soul rinsing

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Nipping to Cleethorpes is not traveling, in the wider sense but taking a trip out of a land-locked city to the nearest north east coastal town. It’s about taking a chance – on weather, light, emotions, friendships, whether your boots are water proof, if you are hungry – quite possibly anything but the biggest factor is being open to the possibility of feeling free. If all these things come together – the result is pure gold. Cleethorpes now signifies that possibility for one friend and I – it’s a chance of soul-rinsing. You see, you never know what you will find when you get there and – in the fading English Winter light, you can find it all. It’s all there.



On the platform at Sheffield station, slipping in with the crowds waiting for the same train (the groups of can-carrying northern men off to ‘the match’ at Doncaster and the women off shopping at Meadowhall) you’d think it was a pretty mediocre day but if you looked properly, there was already a hint the treasure lying ahead from the glint of a rainbow bridging the gap in the sky space in between the platform roofs.



As the train heads east, things change. The earth is flatter, the rain has been harnessed in the low lying fields which are small rain-filled soak-sodden landscapes. The light changes – becomes open. Dora and I know that the Winter light on the British Coastline is special – it reacts to the faded glory of the once busy seaside towns, that now look slightly dog- eared but charming. It’s as if some of these seaside places have been painted-up by brushes in the 50’s with colours that no longer exist- then left behind to weather and fade. Maybe the colour is nostalgia.



At our destination, on leaving the station and crossing the road, we couldn’t have been happier with the sight that greeted us. It is familiar but always different. We head straight onto the sand like children. The joy rushing in, soul-rinsing.



Cleethorpes is no majestic place. When we mention, in passing, that we are going, the thought induces some small sneer or inner snigger from most but they are the ones who have forgotten the simplicity of feeling free or worse, never really felt it.



There is a sign on the door of each Bangers and Mash cafe in London – it reads: ‘Come Sad, Leave Happy’.

There should be one over the exit of the station in Cleethorpes



‘Come with an open heart- leave with a full one’

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Photos

small things
make us smile

heart shaped stones
from a past story

Comments

[anonymous]

Another thought-provoking missive. Thank you. David