22nd April 2024

A mad, bold and frisky sea

Five degrees, according to the car. Road closures and reversals and cold morning clunkiness, but the sun trumps it all. It shines and it shines through a clear blue sky, pulling me east until I am as east as east can be and the land has ended and the sea begun.

Oh what a sea. Magnificent in its reflections, mad and bold and frankly frisky in the size of its waves. It’s a halfway tide, four hours on from the last low, three before the next high.

I walked up with the Canadian. Bikini was waiting on the shingle, watching the sea, sitting cross-legged like a robed Buddha while Puck chatted away to her. He was in full neon bike kit, hat and all, his bike resting on its side on the shingle beside him. We’re twelve again, I thought, meeting up to muck about before school. We’re lucky.

The sea looks doable, if you’re bursting for a swim. The breakers on the shore are significant but once you’re past them, you get a flat-ish part of the sea in which you can sort of swim. In this mornings water, you keep your eyes open, accept that you’ll be pushed around a bit and that you won’t touch the bottom until you’re out again.

‘We’ve just got to go for it’, said the Canadian.

Look for a moment and charge. We got though a couple of breakers side on, heard Bikini shout as she mis-timed one. I felt I’d got it perfectly until the third hit me straight in the face.

And then we were in and sort of swimming and sort of watching out for the next big one that was right behind. Bring it on, and it did. But the sun kept shining and squinting to the horizon, it feels as if you’re soaking up all the nourishing energy you’ll need to get through the week.

The water is ten degrees. Wind and tide together meant that the sea not only did its best to pull us out, it pulled us north too. Before long, we swam back to the beach. I landed mostly horizontally but deliberately so. Puck hung around until we were all safely ashore before biking off into the sunrise.

The beach is cold. Around eight degrees almost entirely because of the wind from the north east, boringly cold at six mph with painful gusts of chill above twenty. The north wind was horrid getting changed but the sun kept shining.

Some Monday mornings need endorphins and adrenaline. Excitement and experience enough to carry you through what could be a challenging week.

We sloped up the shingle, shy of the sharp wind. Grown-ups again.