End of 2025

Each December, we come to the coast to pause. This year, we are back at St Andrews.

Walking along the shore, looking out to the horizon, feels like an act of intention. With the rhythm of the waves beside us, the past softens, the present steadies, and the future feels just a little less daunting.

To let the water cleanse what the year has carried. A quiet, constant reminder that what has been heavy can be carried away.

The horizon is never fixed. It mirrors the year to come — unknown, open, holding both challenge and possibility. A quiet promise of what lies ahead and that renewal need not be dramatic to be real.

West Sands is the beach where Darcy once had her very first run on sand, joyful and unselfconscious, discovering the world with her whole body. That was New Year’s Day 2012.

I didn’t know then how deeply the place would thread itself through our lives. I wanted to bring her back one more time — to let her feel the wind and the salt again — but she never made it. Instead, I came with George at the end of 2022, carrying her with us in a different way, honouring her by returning, by walking, by burying a time capsule.

Standing there then, the act felt both final and ongoing: a goodbye, but also a promise to keep returning, to keep remembering her in motion, not just in memory. And a rainbow on the first day of that new year signalled to me that she was very much there with us.

Now we are back again, our first since 2022 — and this time with Lulu. It’s her first time meeting this stretch of coast that already holds so much history for us. There is something quietly powerful about that: continuity without replacement. The tradition expands, it doesn’t erase. The beach remains the same, but we arrive changed.

As the year draws to a close, we carry the beautiful memories with us – not leaving them behind, but letting them shape what comes next. And as we look towards the horizon, trust that the next 365 days arrive with their own quiet possibilities.