It is carefree childhood days. It is my husband’s proposal. It is my wedding day. It is my son’s Christening. It is retracing footsteps; searching; thinking; resting. It is long walks and sunsets. It is a place to lose my worries. It is the hush of the waves and the shriek of gulls. It is poetry. Findhorn on the Moray Coast is all of this to me – somewhere that is nestled deep in the roots of my heart. It is somewhere that will reappear on this blog again and again in a flutter of different images, as the seasons change and me along with them.
It is where I spent a few days last week, recharging the batteries by soaking up the beautiful seascape. Walking on the beach as the sun sank wearily into the horizon; standing on the shore doing nothing more than watching sheets of light dance across the water; photographing my son stoop to drop shells into a plastic bucket, just as I had done before him, and my mother before me. Weaving through lanes of white-washed cottages; cradling a cup of tea in the ever-so-lovely Bakehouse; inhaling the sunshine scent of the gorse; taking time to just be. Findhorn always reminds me to slow down, to rest; to enjoy simple things like picking up a pretty stone or watching a seal bobbing under a wave. It pulls me into its comforting arms and hushes my ever-whirring conveyor belt of thoughts. It soothes me like nowhere else can. And even though I now live on the outskirts of Aberdeen, it is somewhere that I will always call home.
Click here to listen to poems I wrote about Findhorn and recorded for ‘manonabeach’.
[…] The beach at Findhorn Bay in Moray sits between the pine trees of Culbin Forest to the west and Burghead Bay to the east, where seals can be found by the shore. The area was once known as “Scotland’s Sahara”, before the forest was planted in the last century. The setting is outstanding, part of the Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay Site of Special Scientific Interest. Nearby Findhorn has a thriving Arts scene and the inaugural Findhorn Bay Arts Festival takes place in September, 2014. The poems below were sent in by Emma Gibb and you can see some of her Findhorn photos on her Embrace Scotland blog and read more of her impressions here. […]
[…] Of all the beauties around the country, Findhorn is the beach I love most – here’s what Findhorn means to me. […]