Borth

A mad tumbling day of moors and warm sunshine and endless fields of sheep, the roads running across the high turf past old hedges and distant farms and strange thick pine woods to valleys and chapels and white houses; and eventually the sea, bright and sparkling and hazy, pouring onto rocks and strips of sand alongside a tiny single spine of a street, salt-peeling paint and whitewashed walls and winds of fine sand. New buildings of white walls and slate roofs, a crispness to their novelty, their importance. A crouch of sturdy blue houses, their windows wide to the sunsets, older houses slowly climbing the hill to the war memorial above the grey-blue tumble of the rocks and the sea and the sand drying to gold. A warm welcome from new friends. A day of bare feet and sand in toes, a day of ice cream and faded carpets, the touch of bone-dry salt wood on feet calloused by winter. A day of sandcastles and flags and rock pools and crab-light and tiny sand-fishes, the sunlight glinting on rock-water, the laughter of children. Too soon we had to leave, back across the fields and the sheep and the high moors to tea at home, salt on our skin, the shells and the stones drying in the evening light as we turned for bed.