Sand between my toes and against my skin has never been all that pleasurable, even when I was a child or teenager and my mother took us to Florida for annual holidays. Crowds of sunscreen-covered folks, mingled smells of cooking food, and the cacophony of overlapping voices are also nothing of interest.
But — give me an opportunity to visit the seaside in the autumn or winter, to walk (with my shoes on!) with the wind whipping my hair and my cheeks becoming bright shades of red from the chilly temperatures, and I will happily keep you company!
The Baltic was just behind the treeline in our cottage in Ystad, quietly lapping at the sand a mere one-block distance down a narrow lane. We noticed that it’s a year-round spot for locals who are taking a daily stroll, walking the dog, or ambling along on their bicycles or mobility scooters.
Hope you enjoy these glimpses of off-season seaside life in Ystad!
Needing a break from art and design museums, we decided to get off the highway for two nights in Ystad, Sweden after we crossed The Bridge (yes, the one in the Scandi-Noir television series) and headed south from Malmo.
Just as we were leaving Aarhus, Denmark, the skies turned dark and ominous and we drove through heavy burst of rain and hail. The green-tinged sky looked as if tornadoes could drop out of it at any moment.
Fortunately, the weather cleared by the time we reached the border of Denmark and Sweden and we had a pleasant drive for the rest of the day.
Below is the Oresund Bridge — the one featured in the Swedish-Danish co-production television series The Bridge. Some tips for those who travel this way, there is a Border Force booth that is manned by police at the end. For the first time since we’ve been travelling in mainland Europe, we were required to produce our passports — and the fee to cross the bridge is over €50. That was a bit unexpected!
I needed to catch up on some writing and photo editing and a couple of days by the Baltic Sea in the off-season sounded quite relaxing. It was — and we ended up staying for five and a half days, not two.
Getting in and out of the van multiple times a day, whether to have a meal, see one of the sights, or just stretch our legs, was getting really tiresome.
The cottage I had rented more than met our expectations — it exceeded them with the attention to detail that the owners had paid when they renovated it. We had a fully-equipped kitchen and could cook for ourselves, removing the need to go out to restaurants or bring back sandwiches or salads. The beds were comfy, the neighbourhood was quiet, and the hot tub on the back deck was a genuine bonus.
For someone who is so research-minded, I had done ZERO research into things to do in the area. So it was a very pleasant surprise to discover that there was a movie and television studio in Ystad — Ystad Studios — where the 40-plus episodes of the Scandi-Noir crime series Wallander had been filmed. Portions of the series The Bridge were also produced there. Some of the sets from each of those shows, plus some movies we had never heard of, had been preserved to form a tour. What fun!
Off-season travelling often means less-crowded conditions. But we never anticipated having the entire studio tour area to ourselves. Below are some images from that tour. And yes, I know it’s cheesy, but we both enjoyed sitting in one of the leather chairs from the Wallander series and taking pictures to capture the moment.
An added bonus to staying put for several days was that Mark finally had a chance to ride his new bike someplace other than the congested roads of Essex in England!
It has been several months since we were in Camaret-sur-Mer, but we had relatively good weather for our trip to the far end of the Finistere in Western Brittany, France. Once a major fishing hub, the seaside town is best known now for the ‘Graveyard of Ships’ that lies directly across from the pretty harbour with its string of cafes and shops.
Nothing like rusting hulls and crackling paint to make eccentric but interesting photos. Enjoy!
Camaret-sur-Mer Harbour in Brittany, France
The boat graveyard in Camaret-sur-Mer, Brittany, France.
Crumbling ships in the boat graveyard at Camaret-sur-Mer in the Finister region of Brittany, France.
Mark taking up-close photos of crumbling boats in the ship graveyard at Camaret-sur-Mer in the Finistere region of Brittany, France.
And just to finish it off nicely — a black and white of one particularly interesting clump of old ships, crumbling into oblivion at the seaside.
Crumbling ships in the boat graveyard at Camaret-sur-Mer in the Finister region of Brittany, France. Black and white. B&W
By the sea is where I wish I was right now. But in lieu of that reality, here’s a flashback photo essay from a trip to the lovely seaside town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk in the UK.
By the way, not ALL beaches are sandy. This one is a perfect example of that. Enjoy!
Medieval Moot Hall in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK, built in 1520, with the village memorial cross to the left.
A seagull sitting atop one of the medieval brick chimneys on Moot Hall,.
Fishing boats on a gravel, sometimes called shingle, beach in the UK.
Close-up of a the beautifully coloured pieces of stone comprising a gravel beach, sometimes called a shingle beach, in the UK.
When Mark and I met in London at the beginning of 1994, I commented one afternoon on an activity that the Brits engaged in — quite regularly — that I considered to be quite odd behaviour given the weather.
That activity? Eating ice cream — LOTS of it — usually in cone form — in the dead of winter. No matter how icy the temperatures were, we saw people in every city we visited perched on a ledge eating an ice cream cone or sitting on a bench at the seaside doing the same thing. There might be ice on the roads, occasionally even a smattering of snow, but there they sat, bundled up to the eyeballs and eating an ice cream.
What I found even odder, and sweetly funny, were the people who would drive to the seaside to purchase their ice cream from a mobile van or a beachside hut and then sit in their car with the heater running as they gobbled it down whilst watching the icy waves crashing upon the seashore.
Even on the coldest winter day, British people seem to love to go to the seaside to sit in their heated cars, staring at the crashing waves in freezing temperatures, and eat an ice cream cone.
The lighthouse at Whitley Bay, a seaside town near Newcastle UK, on a stormy winter day.
So here we were on a wintery day two years ago in the north of England, at Whitley Bay on the seacoast just outside of Newcastle. The wind was so high that afternoon that it knocked me sideways when I got out of our own vehicle! The second picture that is just of the seaside and the lighthouse is a more accurate idea of how bleak it was that day. Absolutely no one was game to sit on those seaside benches to watch the waves on that particular afternoon. Brrr!!!
But back in the parking lot — yes — the Mr. Whippy van was doing a good business. The lot near the lighthouse was full of people happy to sit with their engines running and the heater on as they ate their ice cream and watched the crashing surf beyond. Crazy, eh? Or just sweetly eccentric perhaps.
There are days in Normandy when the weather is less than sunny and bright and the fog rolls off the ocean into the seacoast towns.
Today’s picture of the day in black and white is a simple shot — up a set of stairs that are clad in the same cobblestone as the streets below and into the bright but strange light of the fog.
Enjoy!
Up the stairs in Granville, a historic seaside town in Normandy, and into the fog beyond. B&W
Quick photo for you today whilst I am editing another book. This is a shot of Mark by the seaside in St. Martin de Brehal — saying a wistful goodbye to Normandy in April before heading to Paris and Brussels the following day for a short holiday.
We lived for long periods of time in 2011 and 2012 in both Normandy and the Midi-Pyrenees and we continue to love both places for very different reasons.
There was always something heart-tugging about the energy of Normandy, by the seaside especially, and our last few months there were hard to document photographically. We both still miss it — in my case, every single day.
