We have had visitors of various ages, the youngest being little F who, at three months who spent a lovely four weeks growing and giggling at us, learning to put his feet in the sea, his fingers down his throat, showing us what a fabulous sailor he is and keeping his parents up. The eldest (not my bonkers cousin) was 90 and decided that jumping off the cliff at night would be more exciting, a moment was spent persuading him not to encourage Thing 2, he would have done it.
We are back on our own now and trying not to feel like we are still on holiday. I have taken to walking Sunny to the beach every day, sometimes accompanied by my lovely neighbour T. Today was such a day. We made our way cheerfully on this warm October afternoon imagining that we would walk the five miles (ish) to our local town. As we reached the turning for our first beach we noticed that the goats were loose in the ‘road’, this means that the goat dogs would also be loose. Our two dogs, being very vociferous would make their presence known and cause distress to the goat dogs who might decide we are a threat, thus we decided to go to the first beach instead.
Well it was deserted, we two and the dogs alone on a beautiful beach. The sea was beckoning, perfect temperature and beautiful sunshine. I can never resist the water so, after much paddling and messing about, persuaded by my lovely T, I decided to swim in my knickers. They were very sensible bright red knickers – clearly underwear not swimwear – but I didn’t care, we were alone.
Stumbling across the rocks, not being very elegant at the best of times, 100 metres from my clothes and 20 metres from water deep enough to swim I heard an enormous guffaw from the beach, I turned, topless, knee deep, to see a group of about 35 hikers walking towards me wearing full hiking gear, and my dear T collapsing with laughter. I pretended that I always swim in my pants, hobbled into the deeper water and headed for the opposite side of the bay as fast as possible. I stayed there until they rounded the headland and had barely got my clothes back on before the next group of people arrived.
I so hope they were tourists.