Sea Buckthorn
Theddlethorpe Dunes Nature Reserve, Lincolnshire.
It’s not exactly beautiful. Marram-crested dunes; a dense thicket of sea buckthorn that stretches for miles; stony sand; a wide band of marshland, freshwater and saltwater; then a shiny brown slick of mud stretching to the horizon. You can’t even see the sea.
You have to refocus a bit to see the beauty here: the wind-sculpted contours of the dunes, the sea buckthorn berries like dying embers among the dark spines and thorns, how the sunlight gilds the winter-ragged heads of the reeds. We stand in a guttering wind and read the leaflet we’ve brought with us. It’s mid-March and the plants it lists have yet to appear but soon, soon … Their names thrill us and we speak them out loud, like summoning spells: viper’s bugloss, bee orchid, birds foot trefoil, purple sea lavender, yellow rattles, fairy flax.
‘And Natterjack toads!’ we cry, excited as small children.
A witchy cackle overhead. We look up, watch a skein of wintering geese fly northwards.
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