I took my book to the beach today. Plan was to read for a while, stash said book in some rocks then swim back to the boat. Dave came ashore for a while too and we walked round the headland at Pointe de Bout on Martinique.
There’s a building in the trees that’s completely overgrown. It’s history is bizarre, Fort to Nightclub. There is still evidence of both. A gun dating from 1897 overlooks the Fort de France bay, the grooves in the barrel still plainly visible. It’s purpose to keep the British away I guess. Yet also spray paint graffiti walls, a bar area and broken plastic tables from the 1980’s. It’s a place that won’t be in any tourist guides but we enjoyed poking round and seeing how nature reclaims any area with the passage of time.
Dave took the dinghy back to the boat and I read my book on the beach for an hour or so before swimming home in readiness for sundowners with Phil and Linda. I was keen to get my book back as I still had 50 pages to finish so we both jumped in the dinghy and headed to shore to collect said item. I said to Dave, I need to be careful getting out as there are big spiky sea urchins on the rocks. In getting out what happened… I bloody well stood on a big beastly urchin. As Gnasher would say in the Beano, “Grrrgh and owwww”.
How and why does that happen? You identify a risk. You prepare your self physically and mentally to avoid the risk then exactly what you’re keen to avoid doing, happens. There’s probably some kind of psychological term for my stupidity / bad luck / poor judgement / unfortunate timing…whatever it maybe. I now have a small collection of sea urchin spines in my left foot. They bloody well hurt. I know they will dissolve and disappear in a few days. In the meantime my foot is covered in iodine…. Not the most stylish of suntans.
Our friend Hugh got a collection of spines in his foot rushing out to go surfing in the Cape Verde’s. I get spines rushing to collect my book. Dave said…. Well it’s an age thing.
We’ve been on Martinique for several days, moving slowly, and I mean slowly, north. It’s French Chic with Caribbean cool and we like it. Yesterday we moved about 1km from one anchorage to another. We checked out car hire companies today with a view to seeing some of the island on Monday. Even though it’s not many miles from St Lucia to Martinique, they present as very different islands. We’re back using the euro, dredging the French language from our memories to converse and planning a big provisioning shop in CarreFour plus a trip to Decathlon. We could be in Brittany but it’s much hotter and the rum is cheaper, so I’m told.
April is here. In three weeks we plan to be in Antigua. Dominica and Guadalupe are the main islands between here and there. The winds seem more established in the east, occasionally the south east. That makes for good sailing heading north.
grace of longstone 
Helen where are your glittery plastic sandles that every self respecting swimmer in urchin (and other beast invested waters) infested waters wears as an essential!! Just as you wouldn’t go skinny dipping in leach infested lake in Africa ( not me!) but think about where they can go………oh oh oh NOOOoooooo
Today at last the sun is shining here the birds are singing the blossom is blossoming and that makes me 😊 and I’m watching small boys run around chasing a football .
Get some plastic sandles (or may be dangles as my predictive text keeps advising) but MUST be glittery xxxx
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Lovely pictures. Hope the urchin problem is getting better.
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Whilst being scrutinised by fofsted last week, in my Year 8 maths lesson, my mind wandered to what you were up to and I had an epiphany and realised that life is all about ‘your story’ and then i felt pity for you as you dont get to be judged on varying performance criteria and be told you could have done this in a better way. (I then beat the inspector to a near death state with his clipboard but got marked down on this too as i failed to complete a before and after impact assessment.) Anyway…as you pointlessly drift from tropical island to tropical island i hope that upon your return to blighty you can begin to fill the pages of your story with meaningful experiences.
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