March 1st St Davids Day. Monday . The last full month of Lockdown in Britain …
Meanwhile Fools Spring is still in full swing . To avoid too many people we set off for the beach early and were rewarded with a Mediterranean style morning coffee just west of Plymouths Ferry Port on wartime concrete set into the cliffs.
10,000 or so steps later we returned for an evening swim.
We are lucky, now, that we only have tide times and the weather to consider. Sunrise and Sunset have pushed back enough for them not to be a concern. The bright evening sunlight gave us an interesting moment. Is this the oldest Co-op shop in Britain?
David Partner, a world renowned photographer was collecting images for a project he is working on. Here we are swimming off, oblivious to man in small speedos. Also oblivious to man with large Hasellblad. Just oblivious really!
On returning to land David Partner asked our permission to take photographs of us for his project. Obviously we stripped off to reveal our gorgeously honed bodies and our thong bikinis. Just a slick of lippy and we were camera ready. You will be relieved to know the last two sentences are pure fabrication.
Just a regular ‘ bob’ at Firestone Bay.
Links to David Partner and Plymouth Open Water Swimming below.
The Nearly There Trees get a second outing this month simply because ‘Nearly There’ is my bonus point on my game of Boris Bingo . A game played by matching words used by the Prime Minister during a press conference.
As it happens ‘ Nearly There’ didnt come up! I don’t have a painting called ‘Some Way to go still’ Not as prepared as I thought I was!
By contrast our sea swim was a huge success . Blue, twinkly with plenty of sunshine.
Our Vitamin D harvest took very little effort today. The water was still a bit grubby from the weekend storms but calm enough that we were joined by paddle boarders and Kayakers.
Not too bad for the middle of February.
P.S my failure at Boris Bingo can probably be explained by the Prime Minister taking on a new team of advisers. I had planned for the Cockwaffle Protocol. I was not prepared for the change!
At no time in the last week or so would we have chosen to stand in this location . A cold wind has been blowing in from the East, today it was gone and a watery sun suggested that a taste of Spring was the style of the day.
This visit was not a ‘ Bobbing’ visit but we very much regretted not having our swimming stuff with us. Progressive as Plymouth is trying really hard to be I doubt if skinny dipping from a prestigious tourist destination would go unnoticed. So walking and talking was the focus of the morning 10,000 steps. Conversations were wide ranging but centred for the most part on what the future holds for us after the Pandemic. You can read the serious stuff elsewhere but consider this. What happens when we share an actual exercise room with other people. Will they be willing to see us stretching and moving in our pyjamas? No sports bra keeping our bouncing parts under control. Pilates! Pilates is well known for being one of the more fart producing classes. Doing it on- line in your own sitting room allows a certain casualness about such things. After nearly a year of a looser bottom etiquette, at home , the first few communal sessions may be windier than our last weekend.
We did return later for a swim, appropriately dressed. The weak sun had changed and the currents were not too kind. A good ‘Bob’ was had but it started on our usual beach and finished further to the west.
The tunnel, later, had a different light but was still wind free. Maybe Spring is lurking.
It was a ‘Tiara Bob’ today. In other words a Bobbers Birthday.
Also a two bob day.
Our informal ‘Bobbing’ group only has one rule. There always needs to be one non-swimmer for safety and photograhy.
Two bobs were called because Birthday Zooms were needed at the optimum tide . So we split into two groups, one for birthday zooming and one for optimum tide grabbing.
The birthday group were bouyant. The birthday bobber got gifts and Pandemically acceptable hugs.
In the afternoon the Optimal Tide Bobbers were obliged to not swim in the sea as the currents at our favourite beach were a bit too strong. Instead we opted an Atlantic Infinity Pool with a wave splash feature.
The sea swimming community in Plymouth is very welcoming.
When you drive along Durnford Street at 10am and see a woman walking along wearing a Tiara, it is a fair assumption, and in this case correct, that she is a sea swimmer celebrating something.
A double celebration as it turns out, a birthday and retirement.
The beauty of this lovely community is that everyone looks out for each other, in or out of the water. It is entirely normal to ask a complete stranger why they are wearing a tiara. Talking to this particular stranger gave me the heart image at the top of this blog. Her husband had made this heart on their gate to celebrate her birthday.
The smiles are not just reserved for Tiara wearing. Just doing a sea swim makes us smile inside and out.
Some other facial expressions!
But mostly smiles.
People are always willing to share their expertise. On this occasion, not swimming related, how to use drainage holes to frame photographs.
Two of our images.
And someone using their newly acquired knowledge.
As it happens within our ‘Bobbers’ group we have had two recent birthdays. Unaware of the informal Tiara rule, we just exchanged cards. (In future, tiaras will be involved!) ‘Bobbers’ also do original art.
Hugo and Lola by Debs Bobber
Sea swimming is an amazing activity. We plan ours using Tide times and weather forecasts.
For local and constantly updated information, we often refer to Plymouth Open Water Swimmers. Link below.
The first lockdown baking session since non- Christmas took place yesterday. Orange and Almond Cake , as above, and Onion Bhajis. Both cooked because they appeared in articles I was reading and because they sounded impossibly easy to make. In my reading/baking experiment they proved to be as easy as the narrator/author suggested. They were only easy because we are nearly a year into Pandemic Lockdowns. In a pre- pandemic life they would still have been easy but a trip to a supermarket would , almost certainly, have been needed. @theoldmortuary we have become much more confident cooks, driven by dietary and lifestyle changes that were needed when a health problem revealed itself early in Lockdown 1.
Now we have a multi cultural larder cupboard that facilitated yesterdays cook with the aid of the internet.
Onion Bhajis , always a thing of great expectation and sometimes soggy dissapointment. No dissapointment at our house yesterday. In the book excerpt I was reading , set in East London, an unexpected visitor was welcomed with hugs, a cup of tea and freshly cooked bhajis!
Hugs!!! How retro is that.
So good was this experiment of bhaji making there were none left for a photo shoot.
Not so the Orange and Almond Cake created because a food critic said eating it reminded him of his dear mum.
It seemed implausible because it contained four whole oranges.
The cake was fabulous. Thank goodness there are the lifestyle changes that were needed to go along with the dietary ones in Lockdown I. Increased exercise for good health and immune system boosting helps to burn off the calories created by the baking experiments.
Yesterday was a ‘ bobbing’ day. Cold water swimming is very good for boosting the immune system. With cake and coffee packed we set off for Firestone Bay. Seas around Plymouth had been rough and messy earlier in the day but all that was left when we arrived were some curious currents and water that wouldn’t have looked out of place in our post-baking washing up bowl.
The cake was consumed post ‘ bob’ with hot coffee on the way home. Once home we checked a local swimming site on Facebook to see how other swimmers had fared during the day. To our surprise ‘bobbers’ were featured in a photograph.
The link above is to Plymouth Open Water Swimmers. A fabulous Facebook page that we always refer to before and after a ‘bob’ just in case there is anything that we need to know about swimming locally.
Sunset swim and numeracy failure were the high points of the day. The numbering of the blogs has gone wrong and will be corrected very soon. The sunset swim was a choppy affair and not , in truth, quite as pretty as the picture above. I just had to tweak the saturation to make the sunset live up to the last few days. We also tried a swimming shot. Having practiced in the sink beforehand.
The practice may not have made perfect.
The blog numbers failed for a variety of reasons . Some blogs have been removed but replaced . I managed to transpose and not notice some numbers and boosted myself by 45 extra non existant blogs. I just dont ‘feel’ numbers in the same way I do words so I didnt notice. I love numbers for their visual pleasure.
Today started earlyish, a dog walk prior to another morning swim. These are ponderings in a pandemic there will be a certain repetitive nature to my ponders. Dog walks, coffee and some wittering- on are the skeleton on which a pondering is built. As luck would have it a new habit of ‘ Bobbing’ started during the first lockdown, something new to bore you with. Often any of these activities occurs within the beautiful landscape that we are lucky enough to live in. Usually any activity can create a photo opportunity but not today. Greige was the state of the weather this morning. My excuse for using a bright Gerbera picture as the header image.
By the time we got to the ‘ Bobbing’ part of the day the greige had lifted a little. On the way to our beach we spotted a pod of dolphins cavorting in Firestone Bay. If we had swum a little earlier they would have been playing in our swimming area. Sadly they were attracted away by stand up paddle boarders. SUP’s. One of them captured this amazing picture. Something we would never have managed during our cold, submerged activity.
The morning was beautiful and the sea was 10 degrees . An amazing way to welcome in the New Year. Cold water immersion is good for all sorts of things, we all talk a good bit of jibberish straight after a dip though. Then the endorphins hit and we are ready to take on the world. Although, due to Coronovirus restrictions, the world is not available, I did manage a quick nip into the Co-op for some bread rolls before we strode off for a lovely wintry dog walk. Endorphins though, in a similar way to pride, come before fall. The afternoon was spent attempting to read books but achieving dozing on the sofa. The fall to come.
Our evening took in a local harbour and a few Christmas lights.
But then things took a turn towards the awkward. In my haste to get a perfect shot for this blog I tripped over a curb and the precious camera/phone skidded in slow motion towards the harbour edge. I’m a bit bruised and the camera teetered on the edge but ultimately stayed on land.
All is well but the parking machine which told us it was out of action struck another blow. When we put a card across its reader, it was actually rather over active and charged us twice. Perhaps we should have stopped the day at dozing on the sofa!
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