Glorious fourth, summer holiday swimming

4th July 2025

Verges now are thick with grass, the only highlights from dastardly ragwort, the occasional dependable mallow and incidental oxeye daisies. It’s officially summer and white confetti hedges have become solid green, sprouting from recent rain (never enough). They are brooding, investing their energy in tasty autumn treats.

The half-shaded in high sun, moss-ridged lane is ours again (we are lucky) except for one young walker who, in perfectly proportioned silhouette, her pony tail bracketed between large earphones, hears not a thing of our approach until I gently bibbed the horn, making her jump aside.

When Cousin and I lope over the shingle and arrived at the beach, it would have been hard to invent a more perfect sky. Deep azure blue, a light high haze that takes the hard edges off the sun, lower, smudged contrails, the remnants of yesterday’s cirrus, and what looks like a skip full of glitter that has been dumped at the horizon and leaks all the way to the shore.

The Fourth of July. Different things to different people. To us, eight am freedom under a brave blue sky and a deep sighing sea. The date marked by the first appearance of sandcastles, dented by overnight mist, on the wide golden sandy strip that borders the shingle and the shoreline.

It is just an hour after the first high tide. The North Sea is deep again, tailor made for swimming. The underwater sand is still there, it’s still possible to walk to the sand bank although most of the walk today is in water up to your waist.

The Professor Perus had done just that and were happily standing and swimming and standing and swimming, pausing to grin at one another and anyone else who glanced in their direction. They were delighting in our good fortune after more than a week away from the North Sea, trapped in an air-fried city.

I swam beside the Canadian, we were slightly further out, not paying enough attention to the strong tide until we were further north and further out to sea than we’d intended. What does it matter? Swimming is easy, floating easier still.

This morning’s water temperature is just over eighteen degrees, one’s body quickly adjusts, there’s no longer any chill. It feels delightful, cool and comfortable (unlike a heated swimming pool that’s typically twenty eight degrees).

I recalled a similar sea, one far-off January, when the Boatbuilder and I had been chatting in the water until we suddenly found ourselves unintentionally really quite far from shore. We had to consciously pull together enough energy to swim back to dry land through very cold water, against the sea’s intentional pull. This morning feels as far as one can get from cold winter seas.

The Canadian and I swim in separately. I hadn’t gone too far when my leg bumps against a meaty jelly. I squeak and keep swimming towards shore.

It’s the only encounter of the morning. I’m completely sure I touched a jellyfish. Bump into a fish - which doesn’t happen often - and you’ll most likely get a whack or two or three from the tail before they swim quickly off. Jellyfish feel weighty, squidgy and fixed.

Puck is standing on the sandbank when I pass and tell him, he grins. The Perus are still grinning. When I was close enough to Cousin to tell her, (she’s wary of them but hadn’t spotted one), she looks towards Puck and said,

- he probably brought it in a bucket

I laugh. Quite likely. It feels like a morning of summer holiday swimming. I decide that I’ll use the occasional high tide wave to surf in, employing its strength to push me up the shore. It kinda worked, kinda half way, until the following wave pulled me back again.

The flag waves, gentle wind from the shore, gulls shout for breakfast.