Julie Brook’s Tide Line was built in 2025 as part of the nationwide Beach of Dreams project. Parking at the furthest northeast Cellardyke Car Park, a notice points you towards the installation: ‘Tide Line is an invitation to walk in the intertidal space of the seabed made from the surrounding stones. The tides are a powerful expression of the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans. At the moments of the incoming tide 2 hours before high tide and at the outgoing tide 2 hours after there is a dynamic tension that Tide Line reveals where you can see the shift and change of the tide clearly marked and sense this gravitational pull.’ Evidence of the impact of the tide is also shown by the Cellardyke Tidal Pool which has been restored for swimming, kayaking and recreation.
15 minutes walk up the Fife Coastal Path, a painted rock points you to the installation. When Tide Line is exposed it offers an invitation to explore the rock that the path cuts across and winds around. The Anstruther Formation is largely a non-marine section of river, delta and lake deposits, with shaley marine bands where the sea had flooded over the land. It was deposited 337-331 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. In some ways you could view this as the edge of a Carboniferous coast. Prominent N-S sandstone ridges stand proud and limestone bands are distinguished by their cuspate weathering. Tide Line hugs depressions in softer rocks which may contain marine bands. Just to the northeast of Tide Line are fossil trees marked on the OS map near Caiplie.
Today’s tides flood the path on a twice-daily basis, and the artist has responded to the primal force of gravity experienced today. But my geologist’s mind was thrown back more than 300 million years imagining regression of the sea as deltas built out the land, followed by a flooding as sea level rose again, over cycles of perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
This is a new installation which merits more visits. It can be difficult to time a visit correctly given the 3m tidal range and the rate of rise and fall. Tide tables and cycles are accessible online for visitors but a web site or app might help to demonstrate the optimum time each day in the tidal cycle to experience the moments of ‘dynamic tension’. To improve accessibility, clearer signing at Cellardyke Car Park and a notice on the Fife Coastal Trail would help determined walkers miss may it on their way past, particularly when heading southwestwards as the painted sign is not visible in that direction. Perhaps these improvements are already underway.
All field notes should have additional points to help you remember the visit. Suffice to say that we dropped the car keys down a drain. The prompt action and kindness of strangers saved the day.
Cellardyke Tidal Pool (photo Kitty Hall)
Tide Line seen from the Fife Coastal Path - the Isle of May in the background
A sign on the Fife Coastal Path heading NE
Tide Line swerving to follow stratigraphic bedding
What3Words cherubs.tribes.bronzes
Julie Brook
https://juliebrook.com
Tide Line and Beach of Dreams
https://www.beachofdreams.org/submissions/tide-line
Fife Tide Tables
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/
The BGS Lexicon of Named Rock Units - Anstruther Formation
https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?pub=ARBS
The Geology of East Fife (Explanation of the Fife portion of 'One-inch' Geological Sheet 41 and part of Sheet 49)
https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/Memoirs/docs/B01950.html
The stratigraphy and depositional context of a temporary exposure in the Anstruther Formation (Strathclyde Group), Anstruther Wester, Fife
https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/abs/10.1144/sjg34020127