You may not have a bucket list, but you must have a top ten of ‘stuff you like doing best’. Last week I ticked one of these off for 2018.

It was a belting hot day in Devon and we decided to cycle to the sea. It seemed a good idea at the time; it was down hill all the way. The beach was deserted, the sand was warm beneath our feet and as you might expect the water was flipping freezing.

The downside of the easy ride to the beach was the journey back. Cycling up hill isn’t one of my favourite things, nor is pushing my bike, or even falling into a bank of nettles on a narrow lane as a car squeezes past. The hill from the beach seemed to go on forever and there was a lot of panting and stopping and swigging from water bottles and gasps of “I’m not doing this again!”

The lanes levelled out eventually and the hill was forgotten. Back at Wild Goose Barn the sun was still shining and it seemed a perfect night for a BBQ. So, without much hesitation we dropped the bikes and jumped in the car, heading back to the beach laden with the essentials – beer, sausages and matches. Half an hour later after a stroll across a field and down through a wood, we were sitting on our own private beach beneath the trees, while the sea lapped at our feet and the BBQ sizzled and cracked.

It was practically perfect as we munched on charcoal sausages, baby tomatoes and crusty bread. But the best was yet to come.

As the sun began to sink and biting midges appeared we scavenged bundles of sticks and lit a fire above the glowing embers. Birds calling to each other in the trees and the lap of water were the only sounds. I sighed, what could be better than a summer night and a fire on the beach with someone special at your side?

Then across the channel on the other bank of the estuary two men appeared. They were in the shadows and looked like they were picking things up on the beach. We wondered if they were smugglers who had waited for the cover of darkness. What could they be doing? A few minutes later a glowing light appeared in the trees and a curl of smoke rose up into the sky. They’d lit a fire. Now there were two fires on the beach – it was beginning to look like a signal.

As dusk settled into darkness and the tide had begun to ebb we let the fire die, bundled up what was left of the food and followed the sandy banks of the estuary towards the sea and the lane where the car was parked. As we rounded a ruined tower we saw yet another fire set back on the sand. A lady in a long skirt was fuelling it with sticks, while her dog wandered in the shadowy undergrowth. Now there were three fires on the beach.

“How many more fires do you think there are?” I pondered. Sure enough, further up towards the cobbled slipway, yet another fire was smouldering on the beach with a young couple crouched over it.

There were four fires on the beach that night… there may have been more.
We’d thought we were all alone, tucked away in our secret rock and tree-lined bay, but  fires had been springing up all around us.

I can’t wait for our next fire on the beach – who knows what will happen or who will appear?