WATER WATER EVERYWHERE: Thoughts on living on an island

Croyde bay, Devon. Surfers paradise

Over the last week I have been to away on union business to two different coastal towns/villages. Last weekend I was away at Croyde Bay in Devon, today I was in Llandudno, North Wales.

Nothing particularly noteworthy happened on either of the trips, but it did get me thinking about living on an island. It is easy to take fro granted the fact that I live ½ hour from the sea and very few places in the UK are more than an hour from the coast.

Llandudno, even the Vitorians appreciated the wonder of the coast

I am not a big fan of boats or any kind of water sport, but I just love sitting on the coast and watching the huge vastness of water doing what it does, relentlessly. It was there when life first showed itself on earth (in deed that is WHY life showed itself), it has been around forever, it has never been tamed, we know very little about what is at the bottom, it drives our weather systems and it will be there when we are gone.

I cannot imagine living in the middle of a huge continent thousands of miles from the sea. Millions, if not billions of people must spend their entire lives without seeing the ocean. Two thirds of the planet is covered in it, yet people die everyday through lack of water.

Yes, I like living on a small(ish) island.