A sunny day...

A sunny day, a deserted beach, and the mountains of the Llyn in the distance – what more is required?

Of course climbing down the pebble bank was tricky, climbing back up even harder, but it was worth it for the solitude, the smell of the sea salt, and the light aircraft taking off and landing at Caernarfon airport. Of course, it’s really more of a landing strip left over from the war than an airport, but everything counts in North Wales. Three thousand years ago the Iron Age fort, the fort of Lleu the hero and warrior, stood proud above the waves as fishermen in coracles caught sea bass on cat gut lines. These days it’s a sea battered hillock, rising above the scattering of 1930’s bungalows and asbestos chalets.

The beach at Dinas Dinille is an out of the way place with dunes and salt marsh; the sort of place you might come to fish for sea bass or to watch the warblers in the reeds. On a sunny day it shines, the pebbles making a rocky rolling sound as you slide, feet falling away of their own accord beneath you, to the sand below. When the tide is out the sands stretch for miles, and there’s an overwhelming sense of space. The air is so empty and the emptiness so great that sometimes I feel that I am rushing away with it. Big sky, vast sea, and a beach that stretches away to the distant Lynn, across to the lighthouse of Llanddwyn island on Anglesey, and far away into the horizon.

It makes me want to breathe deeply.