A good run ruined

This year has been a tad unusual to put it mildly. Holiday plans made pre-unpleasantness were scrapped and alternatives sought. One morning over coffee Susie said, “We can get into Portmeirion for a couple of days – what do you think?”

Which is how in late August we arrived in the Italianate haven on the North Wales coast. The weather was… well it was Wales so when I say good, you will understand that it p****d down on several occasions, but in-between we saw the sun. (If you haven’t been there, go. It’s grand.) One evening, to salve my conscience after over-indulgence, as men of a certain age are prone to do I sucked in my stomach and announced that I would be up early in the morning to go for a run.

Dawn was breaking when I was awoken by the slap of water on the windows. Phew. I looked hopefully at my phone. Blast. “Rain clearing”.

Which is how 15 minutes later I found myself jogging ridiculously slowly into the village as the clouds rolled overhead. It had stopped raining though. As there was little point in the exercise otherwise, I resolved to run around the headland on which the village sits. The path hugged the water’s edge, falling down to the sea and back up. Murder on the calves.

And as I ran, I became more and more aware of the scene unfolding across the water.

The tide was turning, and the water was glass-still. The wind had dropped, and sunshine was struggling to break through the cloud. As the path descended to the water’s edge the rays caught the wet rocks below.

On a whim I had stuck my Camera phone in my running jacket… just in case. I took a couple of shots from the path. Not bad…. but not quite there. I clambered off the path and gingerly made my way down the slippery rocks to the shoreline (“Stupid old runner breaks leg while ignoring signs to stay on clifftop path”) I sat down and braced the phone on my knee, then composed a wide-angle picture stopping it down to make the sky bluer and the clouds more prominent. Then at precisely the right moment the sun played along. I took several shots, bracketing and experimenting before moving back towards the village.

It was still very early and no one else had surfaced. In absolute silence I framed a picture of the village reflected in the sea.

Sometimes things all come together.

I jogged slightly faster, back towards my full Welsh breakfast. My run had taken longer than planned, but on my phone I had an excuse.