The Beach

The alarm went off too early for a Saturday.  We were heading down to Yellowcraigs for our first open-water swim of the year, accompanying the Wild Ones, a bunch of idiosyncratic lunatics who swim in the sea all year. John picked us up in his car and off we headed down the coast.
 
Yellowcraigs is perhaps the best beach in the Lothians, just west of North Berwick. I went quite regularly when I was younger and even enjoyed a night-time techno party there in the early 1990's. The difference was that the beach was a sunny weather pursuit. Today was grey, breezy and a little cold.
 
There were around 20 intrepid swimmers waiting at the car park for our 8am start. We wandered through the woods towards our changing spot in the sand dunes. I hadn't even unpacked my wetsuit when most people set off down the beach…..serves me right for choosing to use a layer of neoprene insolation!
 
The water got deep quite quickly so there wasn't an opportunity to jessie about. Straight in and swimming! It was enough to take your breath away and then trigger hyperventilation. The secret is to stay very calm. I was distracted by a tern, a cool little seabird. The rolling waves were great fun but it was still hard to swim due to ice-cream head. I would have stayed in a little longer but my wrist started to hurt due to the cold getting into an old horse riding injury.
 
Rosemary stayed in a little longer with her new gloves and booties on! I got changed really quickly but got a telling off for breaking the 'swimmers etiquette' for getting my camera out whilst people were changing! I simply thought Jim looked funny and wanted to capture the moment.  We had a nice 40 minutes chatting in the sheltered sand dunes.
 

Rosemary and I stopped off at the Swiss bakery for bread and then had a lazy afternoon. The plan had been for me to head out on the bike but I wasn't  feeling in the mood to train. Rather, the day ended with a trip to the supermarket.