The Travel Diva

A walk on the beach

Today was one of those rare occasions I took myself down to the beach for a brisk early morning walk. Most of England’s seaside towns are sparsely populated in winter and the wooden beach sheds beside the creaky old fishing boats, which are dragged up onto the pebble beach, were locked up till the weather brightens in spring.

The wind howled along the deserted coast, causing me to assume a stooping posture - similar to that of one shouldering a car up a hill. That’s when I spotted one of the beach shed standing open.

A man and a woman in garden chairs were sitting outside the shed, huddled in arctic clothing with lap blankets, buffeted by winds that seemed constantly to threaten to tip them over. The man was trying to read a newspaper, but the wind kept wrapping it around his face. They both looked content, as if they were on the Seychelles and were drinking gin fizzes under nodding palm trees, rather than sitting half-perished in a stiff English gale. They were content because they owned a little piece of prized English beach-front property for which there was no doubt a long waiting list and – here was the true secret of their happiness – any time they wanted they could retire to their little hut and be fractionally less cold. They could make a cup of tea, and if they were feeling particularly rakish, have a chocolate digestive biscuit. Afterwards they could spend a happy half-hour packing their things away and closing up hatches.

And this was all they required in the world to bring themselves to a state of near rapture.

Labels: beach, brisk, England, fishing boats, walk, wind

posted by Cindy-Lou Dale @ Thursday, February 14, 2008