We love it here
As we (David Marks (a work friend of willow’s), Willow and I) were coming back from our, so called: city break, I bought the Observer magazine at a gas station.
Don’t know if the Obeserver always have a section called Escape (which is like a travel section), or if it was a special issue or something. Anyway - the Obsever had a section called Escape, which on the front cover said:
We love it here
“Why go abroad when Britain has so much to offer? From beautiful beaches to the best hotels, from wine tours to wildlife trips, we give you plenty of reasons to stay home this summer.”
Then turning to page 6, ironically I found,
Best Brithish Beaches
Come on in, the water’s lovely (if a a bit bracing)!
and even more ironically, on place number 4 of this top ten list:
Rhossili Bay, Swansea, Wales
Residents of Swansea have one of Britain’s most beautiful beaches on their doorsteps. From the point at which most visitors arrive, the first glimpse of the beach is the dramatic view from the cliff top down to the beach, which stretches far into the distance. The beaches offers miles of clean sand, with enough space to accommodate everybody from kite flyers to surfers and sunbathers, and even has it’s own shipwreck - the remains of the Helvetica, wrecked in 1887.
Now, as some of you already may have figured out - the reason why I found this series of discoveries “ironic”, is that Rhossili Bay was the place we were heading back from - the place we have been for a city break! (another ironic thing was that the patriotic travel issue also had a lot of advertising for holidays abroad. Remind me of when 911 happen, and a lot of magazine and online news pages still had advertising saying ‘cheap flight to New York’ on the same page as the tragic news.)
Now I haven’t been around Britain enough to nail down my own Top Ten list, never the less a Top Ten of beaches, but I can say - whenever I have been outside of London - It’s reeeealy nice. Seriously. The view most people have of Britain is not at all the Britain I have experienced the three years I have been living here. Britain stretches so much further then grey weather, red double-deckers and old fashion telephone boxes.
I have travelled a lot in three European countries: Sweden (were I was born and raised), Italy (where my dad is from and where my parents live) and United Kingdom (where I have lived the last three years). And out of those three, I most say that Sweden is the one that brings the less to the table when it comes to amazing nature. Now this might not seem as a big surprise to some of you, but the nature is one of those things most Swede believe they/we have the best. Now, I’m sad to report but a lot of trees just don’t cut it.
(now, I do know that I might be ‘home blind’, and that I have seen more of Sweden then the other countries I mention, and there for the percentage for Sweden being number 1 is less possible. But I’m afraid that’s just something you can tell yourself to make you feel a bit better about yourself).
So let’s talk a little about our actual city break.
We left directly after work on Friday and expected heavy traffic getting out of London. I guess most people were staying in London this weekend for the world cup - since it turned out being a piece of cake getting out!
The Rhossili Bay is past Swansea in Wales, which mean we needed to basically cut through entire Britain, east to west. Which again went surprisingly quick. We were their in about 5 hours (and that include a 1 hour Burger King break… 1 HOUR! for a burger (they were sooooo slow and bad)).
We got to the camping about midnight, and it felt like a festival. Barbecues were still on fire. Stereos still playing loud. People screaming and being drunk. David was saying/complaining how everything had changed since he was there the last time (more touristy), I didn’t find it that bad (after all it was completely dark when we arrived, and I was tired).
Woke up on Saturday morning - sun cooking! Wind blasting! David was quick to report the bad news, so we didn’t get our hopes up, about the small waves and that it wasn’t surfing material.
So instead we walked… and then walked some more… and some and more and some more…
and climed every hill we could see.
And then a refreashing quick swim in the ocean before some more walking down to a pub in the local town.
I’m still red. The blasting wind made the cooking sun not feel so cooking. We were all very tired very early, and went to bed around 9 p.m., to the same soundtrack as we found when we arrived the night before - barbecues, stereos and drunken screams.
Day 2 (Sunday) the weather was not as good (but turned better). But we decided to leave earlish to go to some countryside driving - a little de-tour on the way back to London. Again - it was wonderful (photo below says it better then I do).
Made me start thinking about how silly this world is, with it’s capital giant cities and how most peoples lives circles around capitalism and money. So sad. And I’m one of all these people. Doing nothing about it (more probably feeding it).
Shame on me.
Shame on you.
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