Swimming with the tide...

Thursday dawned clear and sunny. 

After a couple of days of cold, very cold for August, temperatures and torrential rain, it would have been foolish of me not to have packed my bag and headed for the coast.

We arrived early, Tashi and I, and were surprised to see a high tide. I don't think we've ever been to that particular beach when the castle has been sitting on an island, it was quite strange, even though I have a large photographic print of just that scene, I had never seen it in the flesh, as it were.

There were several people on the beach, stripping off and preparing to plunge into the sea.

It was chilly, still only just past nine o'clock and with a stiff breeze blowing off the water. 

I hesitated. For a few seconds. And then, with Tashi safely in the car that was parked right by the beach, I stripped off and followed them.   

I didn't swim out to the castle.
I haven't really done much sea swimming for, oh, fifty years, not since my family lived on the Rock of Gibraltar and we swam in Rosia Bay, I've mostly done lengths in a chlorinated pool or splashed about with The Ragazzi as I taught them to swim, so I'm out of practice.

The waves lapped against my face, the retreating tide pulled me out to sea, I caught a knee on a submerged rock and it was cold, very cold.

But, I reminded myself, not as cold as that ice hole in the frozen Finnish lake that I keep saying I'll jump into one of these winters. And it was fun to be bobbing about in the sea on a Thursday morning when I could have been sitting at a desk in a corporate cage.

And there was a lovely feeling of companionship with the other swimmers.
Especially the large brown dog that joined me. No, I told her embarrassed owner who was standing on the beach, I didn't mind having her doggy paddle alongside me.

And then, grinning like a kid, I sat on the sand wearing a jacket on top of my wet costume and with a towel wrapped around my goosebumpy legs, and sipped coffee from my thermos flask, and thought that life can be wonderful.

Several hours, a shopping trip to Ploumanac'h and lunch in Trégastel later, the tide was low and Tashi and I were able to walk towards the castle.

Do you remember that place among the rocks where at low tide there appeared to be a perfect little swimming place? When I first found it I decided to return to check it out when I had my swimsuit and towel with me so...

 

Tashi was able to stand on the sand right nearby and bark without disturbing the snoozing sunbathers way back on the beach, and I was able to walk a few steps and then plunge into a channel that was deep enough for me to swim and calm and warm enough for it to be a pure pleasure.

I floated, I dipped and dived, I splashed and I swam.
And then we padded back towards the car, clambering over rocks and wading through rock pools and slopping over muddy channels, and dripping wet from my swim, to lie on the beach and let the sun dry me.

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