A coastal living diary entry on the genuinely humbling realisation that a freely available tool could have prevented years of soggy, undignified walks home
I have been stranded on the same sandbank, by my own count, eleven times over three years of living in this town, each time trudging home along an increasingly submerged coastal path with wet shoes and a fresh, renewed resolve to finally learn how tide tables actually work, a resolve that has, until this month, evaporated by the following weekend without fail.
Why I Kept Getting It Wrong
My previous system, and I use the word “system” extremely generously, involved simply glancing at the water level when I set off on a walk and making a rough, entirely unscientific guess about how much time I had before it came in far enough to cut off my route back. This system worked, roughly, about half the time, and failed spectacularly the other half, usually at the least convenient possible moment.
The Actual Tide Tables, Finally Consulted
This month, prompted by a particularly undignified incident involving a rescued dog walker who had to guide me around the long way home, I finally sat down and properly learned to read the freely available local tide tables, a resource I had apparently been ignoring for three entire years despite it being posted, in physical form, at the harbour entrance I walk past nearly every single day.
What I Learned About My Own Specific Sandbank
The sandbank in question, it turns out, becomes impassable roughly two hours before high tide, a fact that would have taken me approximately thirty seconds to learn at any point in the past three years had I simply looked at the chart posted directly in my path rather than trusting my own confident, repeatedly incorrect visual estimation of incoming water levels.
The Specific Moment of Realisation
I stood at the harbour, tide table finally properly understood, doing rough mental maths on all eleven previous strandings, and realised that every single one had occurred within the exact window the chart would have warned me about, had I ever bothered to actually consult it rather than relying on vibes and a general sense of nautical confidence I apparently did not remotely deserve.
How Local Residents Reacted to This Confession
I mentioned this revelation to a few longtime residents, expecting some sympathy for my years of soggy trudging, and received instead a fairly universal response of gentle, well-earned amusement, several noting that the tide table has been posted in the exact same spot for as long as anyone can remember, and that most children in this town learn to read it by roughly the age of eight.
My New System, Considerably More Reliable
I now check the tide table before every single coastal walk, a habit that has, in the month since adopting it, resulted in zero strandings, a genuinely remarkable improvement I attribute entirely to the wild, previously untested strategy of using the free, publicly posted information that was there the entire time.
A Small, Slightly Embarrassing Lesson
I share this not because it is a particularly dramatic story, but because I suspect I am not the only person living somewhere genuinely useful information sits freely available and completely ignored out of pure habit and misplaced confidence. The tide table was always there. I simply had to actually look at it. Further coastal living diary entries continue at bohiney.com, with additional coastal town coverage available at prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/