The tide turned

A couple of years ago, a rescue operation was recorded at a lifeboat station in Poole, Dorset. ‘The boat was launched at 13.35p.m. following a call that a man and two children were stranded on rocks in the vicinity of Lulworth Cove. The wind was south-south-west force three. Visibility good. We reached the scene at 13.45p.m. The man and two children — one boy, one girl, both under five — were taken off the rocks and landed at an adjacent cove into the care of a local coastguard mobile unit.’ The report concluded: ‘The man’s name and address were not obtained.’

I can now reveal that the man was myself. At about noon that day, I had dug a pit in the sand for my children to muck about in, while I sat reading a book. The cove, divided in two by a small rocky headland, is fairly inaccessible; you have to clamber down steep rocks to reach it. The sea was an amazing absinthe green that day; sea-birds swooped on the clifftop about 100 feet above us. Whether the tide was coming in or going out, I had no idea. I was enjoying the mid-morning sun when, to my alarm, I saw my daughter’s toy spade bobbing out to sea. It was an incoming tide, and coming in fast.

Within seconds seawater was sluicing round us, cutting off our exit. Hurriedly I stuffed our clothes into a bag and helped the children up on to the rocky headland. Purple plants were growing on the headland above the tide-line; we could climb up there if the water came in very high. But how long would it take for the tide to turn again? I watched the sand pit I had dug earlier disappear under foam.