Loss

Swimming is a  way of losing yourself in the vastness of the landscape.  On Sunday I swam at Slapton where everything is enormous - the sky is huge, the sea stretches as far as the eye can see and the shingle is an endless line.   It's a very abstract place, in three colours, three stripes ahead of blue, dark blue and brown, the sky, the sea and the shingle.  The water was clear and I let it move me up and down the shore.  Then I floated and looked up at the sky.  It's that Hardy-esque feeling of being microscopic in the immensity of the world, and it's a feeling I crave at the moment, perhaps to try and make my loss less.  In the last few days I've been in Snowdonia where I climbed a large part of Cadair Idris in a quest to reach a glacial lake called Llyn y Gadair which lies in a bowl under the towering cliffs of the mountain.  It was breathtaking, and I felt a sense of relief on getting there and plunging myself into its icy waters.  

Sunset decadence

Picture the scene....a feisty frolic in extremely bouncy blue surf, followed by a sybaritic soak in a wood-fired hot tub on the beach. What a way to spend a Saturday evening.  A couple of enterprising brothers had decided they were going to put a hot tub on the beach at Slapton Sands and so we went along to try it out.  It was a beautifully bright autumn afternoon, and we made long shadows as we crunched down the shingle. Getting into the sea was not a dignified experience. As we approached, the rollers tried to crash us over and pull us under.  We bobbed around for a while, looking up at black-backed gulls wheeling around the sky like bits of ash off a bonfire. Then it was tub time. It was pure pleasure to sit in the deliciously warm water; like being in a big cup of tea. We felt like princesses - and a prince - as we sat there, the wood smoke tickling our nostrils, sipping champagne, nibbling on cake, and gazing out to sea.