The open shore running east and west from Saltwick, sand and shingle by turns, cut by stream mouths and tide pools and closed at both ends by headlands. The village works it as far as the wrecks and stops there.
The shore changes character every few hundred paces and then changes back. Sand gives way to rock shelf and rock shelf to shingle, cut through by stream mouths and pocked with pools that hold water all through the low tide. At both ends the beach runs out against a headland standing straight from deep water, and there is no way round either of them on foot.
It feeds the village. Oysters grow wild on the flats east of the houses, cockles lie a finger deep in the firm sand west of them, and mussel beds cover every rock the tide reaches. Now and then an oyster holds a pearl, which is the only way anyone in Saltwick has ever come into money quickly, and the village is careful not to build plans on it.
There are things along this shore older than the village. A stone fish trap curves out from the beach in courses that still hold, a squared stone stands above the tide line that is not local rock, and a small roofless building faces its door deliberately away from the water. The people who work the shore pass all three daily. None of them goes out onto it after dark.
