Walking on water
A near death experience on the Atlantic coast. It's a holiday moment I won't forget.
As soon as I saw the solitary figure, I was reminded of ‘Peacehaven’, by Susie Mawhinney, the true traumatising story of how a young man passed her, head down, overtaking her, walking alone towards a cliff and was, very sadly, never seen again.
I sat upright and stared at the smudged, dark figure in the distance. It was way out, but it was so windy it was difficult to see any detail at first. The sea was choppy. A faceless and non-descript form, human in height, roughly. Was it a ghost? Don’t be silly, I thought, but this charcoal, figureless body was so abstract, standing impossibly above breaking waves, it was the most convincing proof that ghosts exist I have ever seen.
I wondered if I might need to get my eyesight checked again yet I was sure it hadn’t been there other days. Maybe it was a buoy or a mirage? A minute passed. No, this thing was alive, it wasn’t some obscure buoy, it was definitely moving towards the beach. Then I noticed the couple to my right were staring too, I heard worried gasps, as they cupped their hands above their eyes to block the glare of the sun. By now you could just about see legs moving and a flapping skirt or raincoat.
Somebody was walking on the sea, dressed all in black, their outline blurring into the churned up waters. Sure, the figure was getting nearer to the beach, walking or maybe even running now in long strides, but even so, he or she still had far to go. Too far, the top of the wall was disappearing, and they were still walking. They speeded up, presumably sensing the danger they were in.
The second I say we should call the coast guard a dark military helicopter appears, flying low above the Atlantic coast. The line of rough surf crashing over the rocks was shrinking as the sea won back the fishing wall nearing high tide. It flew above us in a deafening roar over the beach. You could see every detail, the door on its side was wide open, obviously for throwing rescue rope ladders for the holidaymaker (or fisherman) stranded at high tide.
But no. The helicopter swung an unsympathetic loop back towards land and returned to the naval base, ignoring the dramatic figure below. We were left to think for ourselves.
It turns out it was a local fisherman who knows these walls well. Very well. My neighbours deduced that he knew what he was doing and persuaded me it was all OK. It was the Almadraba fishing method. It is three thousand years old, for sure his grandfathers taught him the skill. The tradition goes back to the Moors, before then, the Romans, and Phoenicians. This guy was leaving it a bit late though, surely, if he had had to run!? From the beach you see the long, curved perimeter walls but inside those rough walls, are some semi-circular ones and he must have been walking on one of those. Standing at a distance and with a rough sea, you don’t see those inner walls. Fishermen appear holier than now, walking on water. A godlike or haunting image on a rough day for sure if you have not seen it before.
Apparently the huge fishing nets that were used to catch blue tuna in the Gibralter Straight are now strictly limited but small scale fishing has been revived in four places around Cádiz, Spain, where the walls still trap the fish on low tide. Here they are not using nets but instead individual fishermen walk and fish round the Almadraba walls, now a protected UNESCO site. You can see beautiful rock pools at low tide.
Of course fisherman are used to facing danger. There’s no hint of those dangers when we choose fish on the menu. You forget that and the sacrifices they make. The navy based near know about this wall and had obviously seen it all before, panicked holiday makers included.
He must have reached wet sand just in time. I couldn’t help but hope he had caught some decent fish, making it worthwhile the run, his risk and our nerves. I was so relieved it was all ok. It also triggered a memory of being almost cut off by an incoming tide in a marshy estuary and being practically flung across the fast-filling water gullies on the incoming tide as a small child. I was rescued in the nick of time and luckier than the poor twenty-one Chinese fisherman who drowned a decade later, while harvesting cockles off the Lancashire coast, unaware of the speed of the incoming tide.
You don’t forget life lessons in a hurry. Or if you do, it comes flooding back in an instant. Literally.
The story that came to my mind as I squinted into the sunlight at the figure out at sea was:
Peacehaven by Susie:
This week was a bit more serious than last week’s giggle. As you can see, we survived the cockroach-in-the-salad, (not so) near-death-experience.
There is a box below for you to reply to this story and let me know your stories of the sea.
You can also let me know what you think. If you are happy to like a story I write - it would help me know where to aim more for. I am especially interested to know which stories work best. The travelog, the funnies, fiction, the mother nature inspired scribblings…
Have a good weekend lovelies.
That must have been such a strange and worrying sight indeed!
It seems strange that those that were close didn’t run to try to save him... perhaps this is the human condition now?
Huge thanks for the mention Pipp... I Hope your weekend is wonderful xx
Pipp, I read with a certain eery feeling, the scene so well set by you that I could almost feel it in my own bones.
Lovely. Thank you.