Happy memories of a splashing time in the sea

SUNDAY perambulations along the sea front in Cullercoats are a regular activity for your correspondent.

- Peter Mortimer

Paddleboarders on the North Sea at Cullercoats

And I might mention here (it is relevant) that I spent my first 21 years as distant from the sea as is possible in England.

My native Nottingham is an approximate 80 miles from any coastline. In those long-gone, pre-motorway days of my childhood, the smell and site of the sea, not to mention paddling in or the occasional full immersion in the briny, were rare luxuries for we poor landlocked souls denied the delights of the sea and with only the River Trent offering any nearby large volume of water.

The Trent anyway runs through the south of the city which is more than four miles distant from the northern suburb of Sherwood. The only running stream near Sherwood was the Day Brook, which was just about large and deep enough to immerse your big toe in and for all I know, by now may well have dried up, as have many rivulets.