No Way Out But The Sea

The Pembrokeshire coastline. My all time favourite, my first love, my childhood playground. Since I was five or six, my family and I have been back and forth there, in and out like the tide. Lingering days were spent darting through fields, trekking over cliffs and taking a plunge in the sea. Since I was just knee-high I've had an affection for the sea; videos of two-year-old me feature my mum chasing me down the beach and scooping me up before I could make it to the water. She would set me back on my feet somewhere safer, laughing, only for me to make another getaway seconds later.

Our cottage was neatly nestled in a valley, just a short trip through the woods to the beach. That beach still has a place in my heart. It's the place I learned to bodyboard, the place I learned to crab, the place I learned to row, the place I first went out on a sailboat. It was only a ten foot rigid inflatable, but it's where my infatuation began. I remember leaning over the gunwale, trailing my hand in the water and watching the rugged coastline slip by. It wasn't until years later that I'd have my first sailing lesson - there wasn't enough room for me to take the tiller, apparently. If it was choppy, I would lay in the bottom of the boat. The hull was hard and my life jacket held my neck at an awkward angle and there was always a layer of cold water beneath me. But I would close my eyes against the sun and just listen to the rush of water against the outer hull. On a cloudy day I could watch the sky and the sails above. At high tide, we would sometimes sail round to the next bay over. As the tide rose we would be cut off from the rest of the world. There was no way out but the sea. We called it - and still do now, despite being older - our "secret beach". It truly felt that. We could have football and cricket games on the sand, a barbecue on the rocks, anything we wanted really, and there would be nobody to interrupt. The sun would set directly over the sea and tint it with a brilliant palette.

You could always judge how good of a day you'd had by how much sand came off you in the shower that evening. It would get everywhere; in your ears, behind your ears, up your nose, in your hair, between your toes, under your nails, in your eyebrows. It was the result of a hard day's work building sand castles - or just big mounds of sand if we forgot the buckets - and burying each other in the sand. There's a really cute photo of my little brother as a baby trying to figure out how buckets work. His hair was wispy and bleach blond, and his white top and nappy were absolutely covered in sand. The bucket was on his head. I remember the moment the photo was taken. Mum tried to teach him how to make a castle. He liked getting to pat the upturned bucket, but I'm fairly certain he destroyed their creation. A friend and I once tried to replicate the Grand Canyon. We spent ages using our hands to shovel out a crevice of sand that wound down the beach. Eventually the tide began to flood it and washed it away. We moved back up the beach, sheltered by some rocks, and just built a mound.

We spent hours and hours in the fields too. For a child with hay fever, it perhaps wasn’t the best idea - there were many times when I came back inside from a game of football with streaming red eyes and fits of sneezing. Bulldogs, guns, hide and seek, doctors and nurses, water fights, slug fights, spaceships, capture the flag… We were probably the last generation of kids to grow up without phones, so we had to come up with ways to fill the long summer days. We had to come up with something to keep ourselves occupied, however weird they were. Somehow we always gravitated towards the grimiest of places, and we always ruined our clothes with mud and grass stains. We would grow out of them soon enough, anyway.

Later it would be my grandparents' caravan I visited. Each weekend, their dog, my cousin and I would cram into the backseat of their car and talk their ears off for the whole journey. It was on one of these Friday nights that I made my cousin laugh so hard that he spurted Coca-Cola out of his nose and all over the backseat. The pub would await us when we arrived. We played pool; my cousin and I versus my grandpa. Somehow my grandpa would still always win. Each morning we would find ourselves on a journey from the coast path to the village to get my grandparents the papers, come rain or shine. We would leave tea and toast on their bedside table - it was always us kids up before them.

Here it wasn't sailing, but kayaking. Just a five minute walk from the site was the beach where the estuary met the sea. Our wetsuits didn't fit well and mine had a hole in it, but somehow we never got cold. We would paddle back and forth up the estuary, dodging between fishing boats and mooring lines. Sometimes we crossed it and spent time on the stretch of sand that was cut off by the water, backed by rolling sand dunes. On the way back down the estuary we would always try to find the fastest part of the channel to carry us back, At low tide the depth of the water would reduce to just a few centimetres - and the tide turned quick. The sand beneath was the oily, muddy, sinking kind. We once got caught off guard by the tide and had to battle back to the beach, wading shin deep in that sludge and trying to drag our kayaks along with us. Thankfully the water got deeper and we had just enough draft to paddle the rest of the way. It was stupid of us, all we had to do was keep an eye out for when the anchored boats turned and head back to shore then. But we survived, and when we got back I put my blue Crocs on to find a crab bundled in the toe of it. It turns out someone had let out crabs near where I'd left my shoes.

They’re both gone now. The properties were each sold a few years back. We still go camping each year in the village that my grandparents’ caravan was in - it’s become our annual tradition. But the cottage is gone, and it’s odd to think that I may have already experienced my last time being in that village, being on that beach I half grew up on. I’m still blessed to have some time at my favourite place, and that’s what it always will be. Maybe one day I’ll drift back.