The temperature is dropping a bit along the Esplanade as clouds darken and taunt the sun. The sun is beginning to take command, warming arms and legs exposed to the cool wind. I’m sitting on a bench in Weymouth with a couple who are eating apples as they watch the sailboats in the bay. I’m thinking how great it is to be back in Weymouth where everything seems bright with joys from past summer days.

I hear the altercation before I look up. “I’m eighty years old!” There’s a kid with a bicycle. Most would describe him as a punk. His bicycle is wobbling a bit and it looks like he’s teetering as though being knocked over. A man turns to him. “Look I’m eighty years old.” The kid drops his bike, runs after the man and punches him in the face. Outrage among the bystanders as cell phones are pulled out of pockets, not to call the police, but to record the incident. The old man is yelling, “Call the police!” He follows the kid back to the bike and returns the wallop. The kid turns to us. “Did you see that? He hit me!” I expect the older couple on my bench to take the side of the octogenarian. “Just get on your bike,” the woman tells the kid. “Get on your bike and leave before the police arrive.” And once again I’m surprised.

I asked if they witnessed what happened to bring on the fist fight. They hadn’t. Most of the younger people around us fumed at the effrontery of someone hitting an old man. Yet this couple ignored those sensibilities and noticed that both the old man and the young punk escalated what was probably a minor brush-up to a physical fight. Just another day at the beach.

I’ve seen quite a few waterfronts on this trip. My first seaside stay was here in Weymouth in early June, just as the summer crowds began to arrive. Recalling the barren beaches of Oregon and Northern California, I was amazed at the carnival atmosphere of this place. I discovered that Weymouth has nothing on Great Yarmouth, a beachfront on the North Sea where the sand was empty of bathers and the esplanade exploded with so much pizazz and glitter that I lasted two hours, before finding the bus back to Norwich. People movers, from miniature trains and horse-drawn carriages to a fairytale Cinderella coach, dodged the multitudes looking for a fun ride or a quick win. For some reason, the Great Yarmouth steakhouse restaurants were filled with the seventy-plus crowd. Johnny Cash serenaded us with complements from the country western shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lyme Regis represents the rugged, wind and sea-swept Jurassic coast of southern England. There is a bit of sand in a protected area where locked-up beach shacks wait for their owners to return. The dangers of the sea are displayed as waves overtake the top of the Cobb. Mary Anning deserved recognition, not only for the  ichthyosaur, but for fortitude in hunting fossils along this inclement coast. And, If we think about it, film depictions of this beach always include wind-swept heroines on the Cobb. I walked out on the Cobb on a windy day with the waves lapping over the uneven stone. I wore sturdy shoes and watched my step, yet the wind knocked me about like a bad impression of Buster Keaton. Here is my question: Is that Meryl Streep on the Cobb in the French Lieutenant’s Woman, defying the odds of slipping and falling to the rocks below? According to some sources, like the book Dorset in Film, it was the film’s art director, Terry Pritchard.

Dover, despite the grand hotels and apartments lining the beachfront was bereft of sunbathers. The sea contained more ferries and cruise ships than smaller boats and even more large ships than the number of people settled on the plentiful park benches along the bay. Dover, from my vantage point, is a place you go to in order to get to somewhere else.

 

 

 

 

Lake Geneva has its water spurt and the power boats and water skiers to watch, but not many swimmers from where I stood. I’m sure it changes as one moves farther away from the city center and the United Nations complex. It seemed more of a park and music venue kind of place where I stayed. It’s hard to give a lake a decent review when it rained the only night I was there.

On to Italy. I promised myself that I would go to the beach in Sorrento, lie in the sun, and not worry about how I looked or how my swimsuit fared against others. I gave myself the pep talk. It turns out it wasn’t necessary. The public beach area in Sorrento was not full of women with model figures or toned and muscular men. Women, from fifteen to seventy and of all shapes and sizes, wore bikinis or, at the very least, two-piece swimsuits. Men paraded across the sand in too-small Speedos. Nobody cared if they jiggled or if they had to pull down or pull up their suits at crucial places. Everyone there was focused on two things – finding a place in the (and I’m being generous here) 20’ X 20’ space of sand and getting into the equally small swimming area. They had fun. I’m sure that there were plenty of people on all the private beaches who worried about looking good in a swimsuit. The group on my beach didn’t waste any of their holiday thinking about such trivial things.

Lakeside in Como is a continuous boat dock. Nobody swims at the bottom tip of Lake Como. In fact, it is better to view it from a few feet away. Once out on the lake, the water seems fresher, but I can’t say I saw many people swimming from any points along our cruise around the lake. Some of the swankier hotels had pools, clear blue rectangles, resting in the lake. I guess it is to give one the illusion of swimming in the lake without actually having to jump into the murky water. Jet boats scurried across the lake from Bellagio to Como. Planes landed on the water to ferry people to their hotels or villas. What makes Lake Como so magnificent isn’t the water, but the landscape surrounding it.

 

Resting in Northern Italy, Lake Como is really an alpine lake, not a Mediterranean paradise. The mountains and hills surrounding it are covered in forest. The slopes are steep with hill-top villas hanging onto the ledges. And along the coast small villages hug each cove and climb up the hillsides.

 

Now I’m back in Weymouth, with its typical English rocky beach on the English Channel. Today I followed two miles of the coastal path around the Weymouth beach with people scattered far from each other along the water. The best sand is actually in the dog-friendly part of the beach which, I think, is sifted daily. This place is brilliant when the evening sun shines on emerald-blue water. An hour ago it rained. The wind gusted a chill all day. Yet the bay was full of swimmers. Sailboats and freighters shared the water with fishing boats and kayaks. And like all seaside resorts, it is full of ice cream vendors and fish & chips takeaways. Plastic pails compete with beach hats on displays along the esplanade. Every summer day is a holiday in Weymouth.

And once in a while, just to shake things up a bit, someone punches an old guy.