In the Big Waves
We are in Tenby for the week. I think it's something like our forty-sixth annual visit to Park Hotel, which has been owned by the same family all this time.
Today was perfect weather for swimming in the sea: just how I like it, with cloudless skies, but not too blisteringly hot.
The sea was quite choppy - huge waves, some bigger than me (mind you, I'm not very tall)
My mother, who is eighty-seven, insisted on coming into the sea, of course, in spite of the white crests everywhere. She had already swum in the hotel open-air pool with Olli and me, before breakfast, so now that it was about eleven o'clock it was definitely time for another swim.
Here she is amongst the big waves:
The beautiful North Beach is very safe for swimming: but not if you're eighty-seven and slightly built anyway. So eventually, she realised that the waves were too strong for her and she came out, but she wasn't pleased about it.
I pointed out that she was probably the only eighty-seven-year-old swimming in the sea in Tenby today - and perhaps the only eighty-seven-year old swimming in the sea in the whole of Britain. It cut no ice with her. The rest of her day included a walk round Tenby, another swim in the pool and an evening walk up a steep path to a local view. She doesn't compare herself with eighty-seven-year-olds, but with how she used to be and she doesn't like it.
The last time I was in the sea here was on Boxing Day, when there was snow on the beach and I did the Tenby Boxing Day Swim. Today it was much warmer. I stayed in for an hour, swimming and gliding in on the waves and jumping through the big ones - - and very occasionally getting caught unawares and knocked over.
I realise that I am still using all the big-waves skills that I learned here when I was nine. If you take your eye off the incoming waves for a moment and a big one knocks you off your feet, you must instantly jump up, because the one behind will be even bigger.
I jumped into them, and floated over them, and swam through them - - and I loved every second.
Here I am, just after a wave had gone over me:
If it rains for the rest of the week - and I do hope it won't - then I couldn't have had a better day.
Today was perfect weather for swimming in the sea: just how I like it, with cloudless skies, but not too blisteringly hot.
The sea was quite choppy - huge waves, some bigger than me (mind you, I'm not very tall)
My mother, who is eighty-seven, insisted on coming into the sea, of course, in spite of the white crests everywhere. She had already swum in the hotel open-air pool with Olli and me, before breakfast, so now that it was about eleven o'clock it was definitely time for another swim.
Here she is amongst the big waves:
The beautiful North Beach is very safe for swimming: but not if you're eighty-seven and slightly built anyway. So eventually, she realised that the waves were too strong for her and she came out, but she wasn't pleased about it.I pointed out that she was probably the only eighty-seven-year-old swimming in the sea in Tenby today - and perhaps the only eighty-seven-year old swimming in the sea in the whole of Britain. It cut no ice with her. The rest of her day included a walk round Tenby, another swim in the pool and an evening walk up a steep path to a local view. She doesn't compare herself with eighty-seven-year-olds, but with how she used to be and she doesn't like it.
The last time I was in the sea here was on Boxing Day, when there was snow on the beach and I did the Tenby Boxing Day Swim. Today it was much warmer. I stayed in for an hour, swimming and gliding in on the waves and jumping through the big ones - - and very occasionally getting caught unawares and knocked over.
I realise that I am still using all the big-waves skills that I learned here when I was nine. If you take your eye off the incoming waves for a moment and a big one knocks you off your feet, you must instantly jump up, because the one behind will be even bigger.
I jumped into them, and floated over them, and swam through them - - and I loved every second.
Here I am, just after a wave had gone over me:
If it rains for the rest of the week - and I do hope it won't - then I couldn't have had a better day.
posted by Daphne at 10:51 pm
3 Comments:
IT WILL NOT RAIN!!!!
see you soon!
The last picture is like the background to a glossy magazine ad for a new body spray... "Tenby" - A refreshing new cologne for active women - with a hint of ocean spray.
You are blogworld's equivalent of Florence Chadwick, and I salute you!
And so's your old mum...
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