Bookends

Two runs back to back, on the Roseland Peninsula this weekend.

Sandpiper

Bright sun, clean, sea stretching out like a plateau; I ease out my sore ankle, rolling down the road.  Past white houses, Agapanthus celebrating the climate, sharp gradient sharp bend, level.  
Down onto the beach over the sinuous stream filing its way across the sand; everything finds its own level, flat, smooth.

Footsteps pocked across the beach I spread out over the open space; waves like teeth in the mouth of the sea.  Things seem easier now when in my cadence and the warmth seems to seep through and around; elbows sharp bent, flicking the heels back.  
I step up out of the beach and into the folds of the fields running along tight brown paths scarcely room for one foot let alone two.

Rolling back down into the littoral domain my feet sink; the sand sucking the action from my foot and removing the spring.  
Sting taken from my stride I move with effort toward the rocks and then up, calf push, and over the dark hard; mussels crunching.  There is a man ahead, just by the tight gap in the rocks and I curve round him so he hears me coming, steps back, and lets me jump up and into the next bay, all change.

Boat moored, dragged like a carcass onto the track; past another person's domain. 

I stop, climbing onto the rocks and squat, sun warmed.  
Two sandpipers mechanical prodders crank along the beach, excising worms.  Unaware of my presence they stab closer to the rocks until I stand and send them panicking along the shore.

The warmth connects me to the land.  Space defined by sound and wind I hear the waves.  Shirt off I feel muscular, sinuous; organic movement contrasts with the immutability of the rocks as I retrace my steps, follow the path, leave it all behind.





Lighthouse
Jenny and I ran the other way the next day.  The path follows the curve and curl of the fields, and we found ourselves alternately climbing and dropping, and then sweeping round and over each hill.  Moby ran behind, ahead, and mostly in the way of us as he picked up smells and looped through bushes and routes that we couldn't fit through. Stiles and gates appeared to be placed in the most awkward places - at the top of a slippery path or pushed in the end of a bramble bush.  
Cows stood still in the calm of a windless day; lumbering out of our way as we approached. They have trampled parts of the path and must be cautious of the cliff with little protection from the drop.

The sea sat limpid until we broached the estuary where it gave us a sharper view of sky, rocks and trees on the opposite side.  

Back to Portscatho, and back into the people sorting out breakfast or planning the day.  Some just sat, sucked out to sea by the vertiginous flatness.  We made an effort to catch two bikers yards from the house, and triumphantly burst in on the peace.