Thursday and I am up early as I can not sleep. I make a coffee and curl up on the sofa. As usual I check my emails and messages. Amongst them is an invitation to do a presentation on leadership for an open forum day in October. I am flattered and begin to think about it. Do I actually have anything to say? Will the trains run on the day? I will clearly need to think about it. I make more drinks and go back to bed. My partner and I talk tactics about the journey back tomorrow and eventually get up for breakfast. The sun shines and as a consequence the beach fills up rapidly with beach lovers and surfer camps.
My partner and I go for a walk convinced that the market is on Tuesday and Wednesdays, indeed the notice at the end of the beach road doth proclaim it thus. We walk to the market field and are dismayed to read the large sign that says “Market Tuesday and Wednesday.” Interpretation is not worth the effort. We go to the convenience store and buy rolls, butter and indulgent clotted cream fudge.
Returning to our apartment we unload and go and sit on loungers over looking the beach. Both of us read from our Kindles. I re read The Diary of a Killer Cat, which always makes me laugh and reminds me of times when I have read it previously. I move onto Sandi Toksvig’s Between the Stops and sit quietly reading in the sun with the beach in front of me.
We break for a ham roll lunch and more reading until my partner suggests we go pitch our wind break on the sand as we have been in the sun too long. We pack up and equip ourselves in the apartment for our expedition. Down on the beach we pick our spot and deftly begin to erect the wind shelter. It goes up as it should but we soon discover that the sun shines straight into it so we turn it around. The wind blows in off the sea and our little shelter is no match for it. We sit huddled in it reading and nibbling fudge until we admit defeat, we are failed sand nomads. We pack up and retreat to the apartment, where I knackeredly flop on the sofa until recovered enough to start to draft the blog.
Its early evening and there is packing to be done and preparation for tomorrows return journey. Its a prosaic decision to go for pizza from the van at the top of the beach path this evening. The week has flown by and Croyde beach and village has been a good discovery. Weighed in the scales against Westwood Ho! it does not quite tip the balance in its favour. It would be good for a big family holiday if people wanted to camp, caravan or get a lodge and were into beach life, but for us as a couple an apartment in Westwood Ho! shades it especially if we were considering a two week break. So in the morning we leave and will probably donate our drift wood collection to the apartment.
