It’s just a short walk down from the business park on the top of the cliffs at Seaham to Nose’s Point, a beauty spot clearly loved by those who know the area. The white toothed office blocks and the green sided warehouses belie the beauty that can be found there especially when it is a fine spring day like it is today, a day when all the cares of the world are forgotten and people do what comes naturally to them by strolling along the cliff top paths.
There is a road that separates the business park from the sea, a sweeping arc that keeps the man made from the natural, a curve that gets as close as it dares to the edge of our terrestrial world like the river Styx, separating the known from the underworld beyond. Once you have left the modern development behind you and made your way across the road it is a five, maybe ten minute walk to the point with plenty of opportunity along the way to sit down and take in the spectacular views. Today you can see for miles, with Sunderland to the north and a hint of Teeside to the south.
When you get there you find yourself on top of the pale butter coloured cliffs, coated with short rough grass and the odd gorse bush, with a sheer drop to the sandy coves or beaches and rocky outcrops hundreds of feet below. A couple of stacks still stand to mark where the cliffs had once been, eroded by the elements over the millennia, giving homes to nesting birds. This is the battle line between the sea and the coast but today it is the land that is winning as there is no breeze and the surface of the sea is like a mirror with only the gentlest of waves kissing the shore line. The gentle lapping of the water is giving a background beat to the call of the odd lapwing and the trill of the skylarks.
The weather is too nice for even the sea to be bothered and a group of seagulls float languidly on its surface adding to the general air of laziness. A solitary black cormorant chases its shadow across the water, going nowhere in particular and the dark brown tips of the kelp forests close to the shore are standing proud as if to catch a glimpse of the cliffs.
People are sitting on the wooden beaches, alone or in small groups, talking, eating or just looking out to sea. Couples are walking hand in hand, overtaken by joggers and office workers who are catching the air over lunch time rather than sitting in their stuffy offices. Out at sea, a ship is at anchor waiting to slip into the working harbour whose pier is marked, surprisingly for the area, by a light house banded in black and white stripes. The boat gradually swings round on its moorings as the currents play with its cargo-less hold. Further out, the horizon can be made out as a hazy brown smudge blurring the line between the water and the sky.
It’s just a short walk back from Nose’s point to the working world of the business park, across the road and over the newly paved walkways but it seems further than on the way there. It’s a shame to have to go indoors, to leave the cliffs and the shoreline behind you and to hide away from the pleasant warmth of the spring sunshine but its spectacle will still be there, the next time that you come back.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 