Cockles and clams – a story from the Scottish strandline

At the end of summer 2022, my soul was yearning for some quiet time by the sea. I’d spent weeks in nature; in forests, in hills, by the lochs. Wild swimming, running trails, and visiting bothies. By the end of the summer, I’d had my fill of the land and I could feel the sea calling. 

We spent a glorious two weeks in a fisherman's cottage feeling cut off from the outside world. The first week was wild as the cottage was lashed with rain, but in the second week the weather transformed. We were mesmerised by clear skies, the wide expanse of the sea, the tides coming and going, the passing of container ships, cruise ships and oil tankers. On many of those mornings, I’d take a hot mug of coffee outside to sit on the bench in the front garden overlooking the beach, waiting in silent awe for sunrise. It was peace. The salty sea air healed me. Reading book after book in the early morning light filled my cup. These days by the sea nourished and restored me. 

But something ached deep in my soul during this time. 

I devoured books, hunting for snippets of information, facts, details. The quest for inspiration is a rocky road – it’ll take you places, down winding paths, exploring sandy beaches, enchanted forests, real and imaginary. My mind tempts me to these places on the endless search for a hook of inspiration.

Sometimes I search so hard I can't see any more. It's right in front of me, yet it remains elusive, just out of reach. I never know exactly what I'm looking for, but often I’ll sense it. I can feel it. 

That was how I felt those two weeks on the coast. But as a writer, I know that waiting to feel inspired is a dangerous path to go down. Logically I know that writing happens in real life by sitting down, picking up a pen, opening up a notebook or a Notes app. It begins with a blank page. And then, word by word, the story appears. 

But so often, the seed for the story comes from somewhere else, somewhere far away from my desk. 

And on this beach, the secluded private place on the edge of the woods, on the edge of the world, I could feel something taking root. I was looking hard for it all along the shore, thinking, imagining, listening. The everpresent curlews, gulls and oystercatchers teased me as they were teased by the tides' constant motion. 

I thought I could feel something in this, the tide. Always moving. Always on the go. My mind had similar habits. Always coming or going; either coming or going. No rest for the tide in eternal motion, no rest for my mind in its search for the seed of a story. 

And when I did finally find it, I was miles away. Back home, the beach just a memory. 

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. And sometimes you can't see the story for the shells on the strandline. 

Every day I watched the tide come in. On spring tides, I'd find delight as the high tide came higher and higher, closer and impossibly closer. On our last day, I decided to collect clam shells, hundreds of them, to turn into a keepsake. I wanted a string of clam shells to decorate our forest garden with – a small memento of our time by the sea. For if I couldn’t take a story home, I’d at least have something to show for my time on the coast. 

Then, weeks later, on a mild evening in October, I was sitting in our forest garden when it came to me: the sheer number of clam shells on the beach. An incalculable amount. I’d taken hundreds of them on our last day, but it didn't make a dent in the short 500 metre stretch of beach. They were there in front of me the whole time, and I'd barely noticed. Every day as I’d walked along the beach, crunching shells underfoot, I’d barely registered their abundance.

Clams have been a central part of this estuary environment for millennia.

Cockles, clams, oysters and razor shells. These molluscs are part, and have been part of, a highly productive marine ecosystem – one that has been relied on and exploited over the years by humankind.

The first settlements in the Firth of Forth were over 10,500 years ago. The Mesolithic people who settled were hunter gatherers, surviving on what they could find – including harvesting oysters and likely other shellfish from the shoreline. Neolithic people introduced herding and latterly cultivation, and in the Middle Ages, sheep were introduced, which would forever change agriculture and life across Scotland. In the 19th century, the Victorian era, the oyster beds around Edinburgh were exhausted. Overfishing led to stock collapses in herring, haddock and cod. Pollution from sewage and industrial waste resulting from the industrial revolution contaminated the waters of the Forth. 

Efforts to clean up the waters towards the end of the 20th century are beginning to pay off – but even in 2022, the water is not really safe to swim in, officially. And warnings over contamination of shellfish are enough to put anyone off. 

As authors Smout and Stewart write in ‘The Firth of Forth, an Environmental History,’ the vast resources that once made up these rich marine environments are unlikely to return. Yet it’s astonishing to observe the vast quantities of seashells that make up the strandline along the Firth of Forth estuary today.

For such a tiny organism, the clam has so many stories to tell. 

An illustration by John Elliott for the story, Betty and the Sea-Fairy.

They can live to a ripe old age – record breaking, in fact. 

Far north in Iceland, Ming the clam broke the Guinness World Record as the oldest animal in the world. Collected off the coast in 2006, initial counts of the annual rings of the shell put the age at around 405 years old (which still broke records). However, in 2013 scientists re-examined the shell using more precise techniques and the count rose to 507 years old.

It’s hard to imagine a small mollusc living such a long life – how much change it has lived through.

In Chinese mythology, the shen, meaning large clam, is a shapeshifting dragon or sea monster believed to create mirages.

In the Western Pacific, the islands of Palau have been inhabited for at least 3,400 years, and from the start, giant clams were a daily staple. Everything about the clam was important to the early islanders – many of the islands’ oldest surviving tools are crafted of thick giant-​clam shell, including arched-​blade adzes, fish hooks, gougers, and heavy taro-​root pounders. But these islanders looked after their environment – ancient Palauan conservation law, known as bul, prohibited fishing during critical spawning periods, or when a species showed signs of overharvesting.

Unfortunately, for so long, Scotland showed little in the way of protecting its own natural resources from overharvesting. Even though the clam shells today indicate an abundance, overharvesting and pollution over the years has led to a tragedy of the commons. 

None of this struck me while I was there, on the shoreline, taking it all in, breathing in the salty air and recharging my own energy and resources. We all take what we need in any given moment. But it just goes to show what is there, what stories lie below the surface, and sometimes even on the surface right in front of you, when you dig just a little bit. This is what I enjoy the most about harvesting stories from our landscapes – even if they do take a little bit of time to reveal themselves to me.