A gloriously full and bright moon has given way to a shifting sky of varying greys, dark blues and another chilly start to the day this campervan morning. Relative quiet around, except for the occasional car, unrecognised birdsong and chattering Sparrows in the empty apple tree. A bright morning sun just breaking the horizon lighting the morning, chasing grey away and pinking some of the dark clouds. A stunning day yesterday in comparison to the torrential rain of the previous one. Glorious sunshine and a stiff onshore breeze. I am reflecting on arriving at an old and familiar place and seeing it as if for the first time. I have driven, or been driven back and forth along this coastal road many many times, in fact probably many hundreds of times, but yesterday was the first time I had stopped and walked, climbed through, round and into puddles, mud, fields, hedges, woods and twisty tree blocked paths, OS map in hand to reach a coastal sun drenched walk. Walking alongside lapping water, yachts at anchor, fellow walkers and bright sunshine. Listening to the water, watching the tide shift, the sun play on the waves, grass and reeds blowing in the stiff onshore wind. The same place I had driven past, unseeing for the last forty years or so off and on. If I had continued driving I would have missed it for hundredth time plus. The playwright Henry Miller talks of travel and that ones destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. Yesterday was about a new way of doing things, taking the opportunity and giving myself permission to stop, take time and explore, seeing the same place anew. Lovely days people.
“ Let us not take it for granted that life exists more in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.”
Virginia Woolf.
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