Got Towel?

If not, DON'T PANIC! Just find one, or borrow one from an obliging friend, and head out to enjoy Towel Day. That's what I've done. At the end of our day's outing to Cornwall, I carried my towel into The Pantry in South Brent to do a bit of shopping (Shropshire Brie, Yeo Valley Organic Butter, organic salad greens, etc. I love this shop!)and was delighted to discover that the shopkeeper understood why I had a towel draped over my shoulder. He said he had a Tom & Jerry towel that he was planning on carrying when he left the shop.

I didn't write yesterday because yesterday was rather same old same old. We went to Kingsbridge for coffee, then to Bigbury-on-Sea for a sunburn -- I mean, we went there to enjoy the beach, but we got a bit of a sunburn.

Not too much, but enough that we left rather sooner than we had intended. Robin actually wanted to walk over to the other side of Burgh Island, but we had misjudged the tide and knew that we would get stranded over there for longer than we wanted (or pay the cost of a tractor ride back)  -- so we contented ourselves with sitting on the rocks and watching the tide come in. That meant also watching the beach get smaller and smaller and smaller, so that it became more and more and more crowded as the people on the beach retreated from the oncoming tide.

From our rocky vantage point, we were able to watch the tractor lumber over from the island, bearing  its complement of passengers who didn't want to brave the cold sea and wade back (I couldn't blame them. I stuck my foot in the water at one point, and it was COLD.) Hmmm. I just realized there's a UFO in this photograph. It appears to be a flying hat.

In any event, that was yesterday. I did a bit of writing while we had our coffee in Kingsbridge -- I'm finding that I'm much more of a people watcher here than I am at home, and my writing exercises tend to be attempts to describe the people I see. Maybe England has more memorable people than Canada does - or maybe it's just that it's here I've developed the habit of sitting at a little outdoor table, writing, drinking cappuccinos, enjoying the sunshine, and watching the people go by.

So today we went to Cornwall -- to a part of the county that neither of us had visited before. We crossed over from Devon to Cornwall via the chain ferry (we have done that before, but it's been a long time) and headed for Whitsand Bay. At first we turned left up the coast road, but the operative word there was definitely "up". Higher and higher we went, while the gorgeous, seemingly endless beach receded below us. The view was spectacular. Most notably, there was no horizon. The mist over the water obscured it so that water simply gave way seamlessly to sky.

It was enchanting, but we really wanted to get to the beach, so we turned around and headed back the other way, past Portwhistle and Downderry, all the way to Seaton, where we found the beach. We ended up taking a walk along the sea wall, where I saw this heartening sight -- a young woman perched (rather precariously, I thought) on a rock, nearly surrounded by the sea, reading a book. I tried to enlarge the photo enough to see what she was reading, but to no avail. I've decided she must be reading Kathryn's Secret Graces and that's why she hasn't noticed the encroaching tide.

Happy Towel Day, everybody, and remember: DON'T PANIC!