I had planned on spending these last two weeks in solitary confinement in my room with only my Latin-stuff as sad and silent company. With my flatmates and most international students gone there was nothing to keep me from revision. Didn't quite work out that way, thanks to two powerful forces: My flatmates' (and now also my) friends and the sun. Both were persistent and after a day of disciplined studying and constant sighing at the sight of the sun I buckled and gave in.
So Friday I dressed in my best beach clothes (finally my bikini would get its turn!) and met the others at the station for a 20 minutes train ride to one of Anglesey's finest beaches: mile-long stretches of fine sand, hidden behind the beautiful barriers of grass-topped sand dunes. We waded through a little stream, strode along the beach and finally spread our towels at the foot of a dune..
...and into the Atlantic we went! Of course the water did not have bathing temperature but was rather - how do I best phrase that...? - refreshing, so we kept moving, trying to find some warm patches and I resolved not to be the first one to want to get out again. Eventually our bodies just accepted the circumstances and we had fun snorkling, swimming, diving or just playing with the waves. It did get cold, eventually and we returned to our base camp to dry off.
After a journey to the ice cream van (inkluding wading through that stream again, which got us all wet again) we were ready for another round of swimming. I found a long, smooth strip of seaweed and spontaneously decided to take it with me to weave it into a bracelet. I did not know then, that this would become my occupation for the next hour as suddenly everyone wanted seaweed bracelets or anklets.
The rest of the afternoon passed with some sun-bathing, dune-jumping, a simplified version of cricket and the burial of several people as a result:
Wig lying on the beach? Or might it be a real person with a body attached somewhere?*Around six o'clock the sun was not able to offer enough warmth for us to lie around half-naked anymore and we dressed, packed and made our way back to the station where Wales' glorious railservice took the piss: Our train was first delayed by half an hour and then cancelled completely, so that we had to wait for full 60 minutes for the next one.
Will, our trainspotter, made sure we'd be the first to know when our trainwould make it's appearance at the horizon.
Sitting around on a platform of a request stop (-> flag the train down, if you want to hop on - no joke!) in some little village on Anglesey is not too bad in good weather and good company (I mean, this is Wales: it could also be raining heavily or be windy enough to blow you off the platform) and so we were still in quite a good mood when the train FINALLY arrived and brought us back to Bangor.
I cooked myself some lovely, delicious pasta, washed sand and salt off my body and reminisced about the beautiful day... until the stench of wet seaweed from my ankle reached my nose and I had to take it off...
I cooked myself some lovely, delicious pasta, washed sand and salt off my body and reminisced about the beautiful day... until the stench of wet seaweed from my ankle reached my nose and I had to take it off...
*don't worry - nobody died in the course of our burial rites, not even Liz, although it may look like it
No comments:
Post a Comment