Five favourite things since my childhood: TRAVELLING (part two)

5. TRAVELLING

Especially scared I felt when we were walking along that sandbar for the first time. Our children were only 6 and 8 at that time. We had a limited amount of water and didn’t know how much time it would take to pass this lonely place. And what a relief it was as the first remote lights of people’s dwellings appeared at last shining in the dark. For us those encouragingly twinkling lights meant – water as we almost ran out of it. We really felt like the true pioneers of the past. 
 

The sea was working hard in winter - so the coast looked different every summer. Most of all we loved high clay cliffs with rooms as we called them. They were the big round hollows made by the winter storms huge waves. In the middle of every room there was a heap of different things thrown out by the sea. I liked to investigate this litter with my children. It looked so clean and smooth washed out by the salt water. Once we found a multicoloured beach ball. Children took it to every walking tour since then. It was like our trophy taken from the sea - my daughter even invented a strange name for it – it was called Dzoom.

For several years those walking tours more or less satisfied my passion for change of air and new impressions but then I began to talk about new places to explore. As for my husband and children they liked to discuss this matter but weren’t in a hurry to change their habits. Although once, just a year before we started our walking tours, we were camping with our fellow student and his family in the Crimea. I loved the place we were staying at so much that even my husband’s bad mood and his coolness, which he showed me from time to time with some incomprehensible frequency, didn’t spoil my pleasure. 
 

I remember how after a long journey in a hot stuffy bus and a tiring walk with heavy bags through the pine-tree forest we reached the beach at last and ran into completely transparent emerald warm water. It was a sensation of flight and unreality. Our friend’s wife felt anxious about our first impression because it was them who invited us to their usual place. When she asked if we liked being there I couldn’t find proper words and just said: “Yes, very much”. It would be too sentimental to answer that maybe in paradise people felt like that.

A high wall of mountains protected the coast from the northern winds. Nights were so warm that there was no need to set up our tents. We just spread them out on the ground, put our sleeping bags over and before falling asleep were watching the stars twinkling through the slightly swaying pine tree branches. And not a single mosquito disturbed us. It was so odd not to have these blood thirsty creatures to spoil our summer rest a little. 
 

When we were walking through the forest, or rather a huge park, to the nearest town to buy some food, squirrels were jumping among the branches above our heads. Climate was so mild there that we found some small cactuses growing just near the road. When I was cooking on the camp-fire alone some curious lizard usually came watching me, sometimes one or two squirrels joined it. 
 

Children loved swimming among the rocks which stuck out of incredibly attractive turquoise water like small islands. Our friends told us that the best way to teach kids swimming was to give them flippers. Our daughter borrowed a pair of those from their children and indeed she learnt the skill of swimming very quickly. Her younger brother felt envious and upset but in the end he managed to do that too.

From time to time the policemen or frontier guards came and asked us to leave. We promised but stayed where we were – we felt well protected having six small children in our company. The representatives of authorities tried to persuade us that it was quite easy to get a place in one of the holiday homes on the coast. But we knew it was not true – they were for party elite, not for ordinary people. And as for me - our way was much cheaper and much less boring. 
 

We were very curious about the first and last president of the USSR Michael Gorbachev’s summer cottage. It was rather a villa of course but we called it “summer cottage” in Russian. It was situated not too far from our place – we could see an orange roof and white walls among the trees. Two or three military ships stood on their guard just opposite it one or two kilometers from the coast. Sometimes we heard the sailors' cheerful voices as they jumped into the water from the board.

To be continued…

1. THE SNOW  
2. THE NEW-YEAR CELEBRATION
3. THE ICE-CREAM
4. DRESSES    
5. TRAVELLING (part one)