LAST GASP of SUMMER

 

Nearly halfway through September and so cold last week we had the heating on for a few days. But the sun has come again and temperatures rocketing for a few days so we went to Holkham Hall beach.

Swimming in a lido is invigorating, and going to a lake can be peace-and-medidation, but nowadays going to a beach in the sunshine can be frenetic. Excited people were intent on making the day fun, (and  it was no surprise that the first car-park was already full at 11am) and a throng of people were walking the kilometre down to the low tide of the North Norfolk coast.

It's perhaps the best beach in England. Easy to get to but no buildings or roads and every visit there a symphony of light, it being one of the few beaches that face northwards.  It all belongs to the estate of Holkham Hall and everything is correct, tidy and efficient, if a little costly to park. But no-one bothers about money anymore not having spent any recently, and who knows what the winter to come will bring, in terms of new rules so everyone siezed the day.

I walked down to swim in the calm North Sea and passed groups of people already set up. Almost all of them seemed to have a dog or two chasing around, and the sun beat down on everyone in a final display of how nice a heatwave can be. The sand was soft and the water was clear, as it often is in the autumn so I swam twice in the 18C water, sitting back into the water with hardly a gasp. The gang of six people next to me waved and said hello. That's one of the benefits of lockdowns..everyone talks.

A chap passed our windbreak pulling a truckload of beach equipment and took a statutory rest break to chat. His family seemed to have gone on ahead. He said he came from Sleaford and was hoping to stay the night somewhere but had found nowhere at all ! "It's entirely full."

"I managed to find a room in a Holiday Inn in Norwich for £230 ..and two nights minimum stay. Or a camping site for £70 per night. It's all full. Can't go anywhere else I suppose," he said and pulled away back into the slow lane.

The sky was blue from east to west but I saw the trails of airplanes flying from East Midlands and Manchester to Germany and Holland. Eight or ten great streaks of white showing that some planes are flying again.

We made our way back to the car later with hundreds of others, walking barefoot between two lovely rows of mature trees. 

When I was working in the Middle East I used to go out fishing with local boy, Saeed Rashid, on the Persian Gulf. He said that his grandfather was blind but 'could tell what fish he had caught from the feel of the line alone.' I stood waiting by the car and wondered if there are  people who can indentify trees by the sound of them in the breeze. 

 

 

There was only a little breeze but it was magnified. It shuffled the leaves and rather alerted me so I stood and wondered why that was. Suddenly I realised it was the sound of winter to come. These trees.."Rowans" my wife said looking at her phone... were blowing noisily, reminding me of chilly, late stormy day, windy-winters in woodland. 

Perhaps, I thought, this was, today the last gasp of summer. The final outpourings of sun, radiation, and holiday spirit. It was only 4pm and yet the sun was fading but we pressed on to Hunstanton and sat on the green with fish and chips and a pint of beer, and I wondered when we would have such another wonderful hot time as today, again. And what the next wintertime would bring to us all, this the third year, of all these social changes that so run our lives.