Sea Swimming Blog #50
Day 89 Sea Swimming.
#50 of the blog.
The sky was on fire this morning!
I’d arranged to meet the Salty Sea PUPS at Archirondel for an 8am swim but thankfully had got up at 6:45am as Ben had mentioned he wanted to be there for sunrise - this isn’t usually an option for me during the week with the school run to do so despite it being the weekend I thought it was worth getting up a little earlier - the early bird catches the worm and all that.
I got my stuff ready and opened the front door at just gone 7am and suddenly realised we were in for an amazing start for the day with a bright orange, red & pink glow in the distance, just beginning to illuminate the clouds in the sky.
What a beauty!
I jumped in the car and rather than take the country roads like I normally do when I head out east, I decided I needed to be near the sea asap and capture a photo of the sunrise whilst it was at it’s peak in terms of the vibrancy of colour and it’s ‘spread’ throughout the clouds above.
Knowing that by the time I got to Archi, the light show would most likely be over, I thought that Burger Bar was as good a place as any to stop - with the cool little huts of Pizza Quarter adding to the beach vibe composition I quickly imagined in my mind.
The reflective quality of the stony slipway would also add another colourful layer of interest in the foreground and now, with the tide on the way up, I waited to capture a couple of waves as they crashed against the wall and up into the air with the stunning light shining through from behind.
What great start to the day - and I hadn’t even been in the sea yet!
Back in the car and en route to Archi I passed Sam on his bike wound down the window and issued a war cry to which he responded in kind… like a pair of pirates about to go into battle!
I bloody love these boys and the camaraderie we’ve struck up over the years - each pushing one another to be better versions of ourselves.
Once we were all there (including honorary pup’et Oonagh) we had a quick chat whilst braving the wind before heading in for a quick dip - Sam and myself doing a bit of front crawl for a brief distance but once again keeping our exposure time down as we have been forced to do these past few days.
A very quick chat and change later and everyone made their way home.
The plan for the afternoon was to meet up with a few friends on the beach and whilst there, take part in the The Big (Socially Distanced) Channel Islands Beach Clean 2021… my little one and I managed to fill a large bag with discarded plastics, rubber, wire, cans, gloves, hat, lighters, Fitbit and much more in no time at all. Whilst it’s kind of nice to be able to teach the next generation about the importance of cleaning up after ourselves (and even other people) it’s obviously something I wish we didn’t have to do… and to think that we actually have some of the cleanest beaches in the world… makes you think what some of the worst places must look like.
To finish off and to incorporate our beach cleaning activity, I thought (just as I’d done for the 50th swim) that I would also commemorate today as being the 50th blog post.
One of the biggest issues I have faced in my life both personally and creatively is consistency - it’s so easy to start something but much harder to keep it going.
I’m as pleased with my commitment to this blog as I am getting in the water itself. It’s given me a purpose and a focus each and every day which has been a bit of a godsend both over the winter period and in these covid days when photographic work, like many other industries, has had its own little dip.
Now, I am 100% sure that there’s a proportion of people who wish I’d not managed to keep this up and that I would shut up about sea swimming but I’m equally sure that there’s a group of people who enjoy these posts (or so they’ve told me anyway!)…
In either case I won’t be stopping anytime soon.
“Do or do not.
There is no try”
- Yoda