Crisis! Stranded Sisters Cut Off by the Tide!

My youngest sister who came to stay with me for the night on retreat in New Quay

This photo was taken when we were on holidy in Puerto Rico last year!

I don’t feel that I can finish blogging about my recent stay in New Quay without telling you about mine and my sister’s near miss with a watery end! We had been for a wonderful coastal path walk and ended up on the beach.

‘I reckon we can walk round the beach to get back to New Quay.’      My sister quirpped.

‘Ok, let’s do it.’

So off we trot, me in a summer mini skirt and flip flops, hardly hiking attire, but it was sunny and it didn’t look far.

I suppose the fact that noone else was going that way back to town should have been a bit of a clue as to why we should have turned back there and then but no, we were so joyous to be in each others company, in such a beautiful place, that we carried along the pebble beach.

Soon there didn’t seem to be any sand left, just pebbles, well, now we came to think of it, they were more like rocks. I kept falling out of my flip flops onto the slate.

I expect that 2 other middle aged women in sun bathing outfits might have been swayed by the DANGER FALLING ROCKS sign attached to the crumbling slate walls that were now towering above us, but hey, how dangerous could it be ... we carried on... And so did the tide!

The water got higher and higher until eventually, there was only the fragmented slate rocks, wet moss, the sea and us left completely stranded.

‘We’ll have to swim,’ said my sister, who use to get up at 7am every morning to train with Hertfordshire County Swimming Team when she was a child.

‘I don’t think so,’ said I, who nearly drowned swimming a width in the junior pool.

‘What about your mobile fone, can you ring someone?’ She yelled above the crashing waves.

‘No signal!’

‘Shout for help!’

‘No, we'll go ...’

‘Please, shout for help.’

I could tell she was getting a tad stressed now.

 

‘We’ll  go back. No one can hear us, let’s just turn round and go back.’

'NO! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!’

She was shouting at the top of her voice now.

‘Listen love, get up and follow me. I’ll hold your bag, come on! If we’re quick we can make it back.’

We had to take off our shoes and wade back through the water, but my sister caught her foot on the slate beneath the sea. It was a really nasty cut but we had to keep going or else we really would have been completely stranded out there.

‘I’ll carry your stuff, just focus on getting back, come on!’

Eventually we were on the pebbles and then back to sand.

‘That was a great bit of team work.’ My little sister said and I felt a glow inside because we have always worked well as a team. 'You know what,' she continued, ‘even though it was a bit of a crisis and we were stranded on the rocks and at one point I thought we might drown, I’ve had a great time anyway,’ she said, ‘an adventure. We always have a great time don’t we Chez.’

Yes, we certainly do xxx

Funny thing was, when we got to New Quay we sat on the front having a cappacino and could see where we had been stranded and it was so close to the sea front that everyone must have been able to see us! Me, with my bright orange mini skirt crawling on my hands and knees desperate to land on terra firma, scrambling up the slate ...  and my sister, screaming at the top of her voice for help.

‘Why didn’t anyone help us?' she asked. And then we realised at that point that the tide was completely out! So if we had have waited instead of becoming panic striken, we could have easily walked back across the beach unscathed ...  seems everyone else realised this, which is why they probably left us to it! And for us ... another lifetime memory created!