Being driven under the heavy clouds towards the beach I remember a summer photo I took of my daughter, my wife and her mother sitting in front of a brightly coloured windbreak, a hamper, buckets and spades. It could have been taken any time in the last fifty years, three generations of English women, all feeling at home on this Dorset sand.

But for transpennine me it is a different country. Approaching through the surrounding landscape I feel more in a Hardy novel than my body. That photo from a couple of years ago conjures up more about my childhood than my adult life. At the coast I look out at boats and jet skis on the huge bay with no idea how the people in them live their Southern England/West Country Maritime Leisure lives, even the beach walkers seem foreign with their dogs and wax jackets, their intent family exercise.

It is not that I feel alien or am not comfortable, I am glad my family connections bring me to this beautiful beach, but there are places on different continents where I feel more at home than here.