The last eveningA swim at sunrise is always the best, if you can get up in time. The sea seems incredibly fresh, completely new, the water as calm as a lake, just a slight swell that brings occasional wavelets on the shingle with a soft kissing sound; the sea is still sleeping, breathing calmly. The water feels warm, a little heavy in its fluidity, but the Mediterranean is packed with salt. & at sunrise and for about five minutes, the low sun brings the surface of the water alight with colour. You swim immersed in colour.
Then it's a 15-minute walk along the beach for a cup of coffee, and all the way back in fresh bright light. The bicycle is folded, the tent and sleeping bag thrown into a holdall, and a seat on the TGV claimed as the northward journey unfolds. Mte Ste. Victoire, then the towers of Avignon fall away into the past. No more sunrise swims this year. Nine hours later, it's a chilly London evening, after a few weeks wearing little more than shorts and a tee-shirt. Tango, but no more ripe peaches.
3 comments:
And were the mermaids singing, each to each? :)
It sounds wonderful. Makes me nostalgic for el Sur ..
They might have been, but I didn't hear them. You have to swim out a distance to lose the sound of traffic, and since a great white nosed into one of the town beaches in Antibes this spring, I've been wary of swimming far out when the lifeguards aren't there. They do breed in the Mediterranean (great whites, that is), but had never been seen on that coast before. I hope they didn't have the mermaids for lunch...
Tete is SO boring: one dance looks like the other.
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