tides

sporina wrote: »

Hi Folks, in brief can anyone tell me how many tides there are - as in is there is tide cycle? The reason I want to know is because I went to a beach today and the tide was in yet when I was there in Feb the tide was out - was there both times at 3pm. Thanks in advance, S

Here's information on how tides work.
Here's the range variation, i.e. springs and neaps. You can read more on these here.
Explaining what you observed, tides are mostly semidiurnal (two high waters and two low waters each day), or diurnal (one tidal cycle per day). The two high waters on a given day are typically not the same height (the daily inequality); these are the higher high water and the lower high water in tide tables. Similarly, the two low waters each day are the higher low water and the lower low water. The daily inequality is not consistent and is generally small when the Moon is over the equator. Courtesy of wikipedia, that's a tidal cycle for you. Each day the high tide (HT) and low tide (LT) move ca. 45 minutes forward.