Some of the highest tides for 15 or so years this weekend, and we went to Swansea bay to look at this morning's, at 7.45am. It was just over 10 metres. The whole bay was covered, from Porthcawl to Mumbles head, with grey, slurping, lashing water; the Irish ferry (Cork-Swansea) rounding the Head and chuntering in (in a cloud of disgusting fumes though, I have to say!) to dock. spray lashing over the promenade. There was no-one much about, surprisingly, apart from a couple of fishermen who weren't catching much. If only we'd had the high winds and rain of a couple of days ago we wouldn't have been strolling so close to the edge of the prom. And then for breakfast and coffee at the nearest hotel on the seafront. The friend who was with us said he and his wife used to go and look at the high tides in north Gower (the penninsula just the other side of Swansea) which came up and covered the scrub and marshland. Totally wild ponies live on that stretch and, he said, they could sometimes be seen with just their heads sticking out of the water when it was at its highest.

And now, to make this relevant and so's I don't have to put 'OT' as part of my title, here's a poem which I've known since I was fifteen. I never realised it was 16th century, however. A sad, lyrical little piece.

The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire

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The old mayer climbed the belfry tower,

    The ringers ran by two, three;

'Pull, if ye never pulled before;

    Good ringers, pull your best,' quoth he

'Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!

Ply all your changes, all your swells,

Play uppe "The Brides of Enderby."'

Men say it was a stolen tyde -

    The Lord that sent it, He knows all;

But in myne ears doth still abide

    The message that the bells let fall:

And there was nought of strange, beside

The flights of mews and peewits pied

    By millions crouched on the old sea wall.

I sat and spun within the doore,

    My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes;

The level sun, like ruddy ore,

    Lay sinking in the baren skies

And dark against day's golden death

She moved where Lindis wandereth,

My sonne's faire wife, Elizabeth.

'Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!' calling,

Ere the early dews were falling,

Farre away I heard her song.

'Cusha! Cusha!' all along;

Where the reedy Lindis Floweth,

    Floweth, floweth,

From the meands where melick groweth

Faintly came her milking song -

'Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!' calling,

'For the dews will soone be falling;

Leave your meadow grasses mellow,

    Mellow, mellow;

Quit your cowslips, cowslips yellow;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot

Quit the stalks of parsely hollow,

    Hollow, hollow;

Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,

From the clovers lift your head;

Come uppe Whitefoot, come uppe Lightfoot,

Come uppe Jetty, rise and follow,

Jetty, to the milking shed.'

If it be long, ay, long ago,