Flip flops and the fear of sudden death

Jump forward to 2010, quite an achievable feat when you're standing in 2009 on new years eve, but something you might find difficult if you start in 2014. I can't speak for any future years when time travel may have been invented, but even then jumping forward to 2010 will still take some doing.

This happened to be the first holiday Rachael and me took together, at one point it seemed as though it could be the last....

We decided for our first holiday to go somewhere that neither of us had ever been, since we were going around the end of Summer, the options were kept limited to places on and around the Mediterranean, following 7 rolls of the dice and a tie break coin flip, we booked a week away in Albufeira, Portugal.

I remember the excitement of packing our suitcase, the careful planning to ensure we arrived at the airport in plenty of time and of course the disappointment as the Easyjet woman told us our flight had been cancelled following industrial action and that the next available flight was in 2 days time. Luckily a quick call to Sunshine allowed us to add an extra day on to the end so all was not lost.

I realise its like I'm promoting Sunshine for free, but I don't mind too much for the following reasons:
1 - It is actually a good website for booking holidays, they seemed really nice and like they wanted to help and they did really come through for us on this occasion, in fact, the apartment we stayed in on the last night was even bigger than the one we stayed in for all the other nights, had a nice balcony with a picturesque view of the surrounding area and the TV picked up far more of Portugal’s channels, meaning we could if we wanted to, watch Snoopy in Portuguese.
2 - The only other person that I know will read this blog already knows about Sunshine and in fact was on this holiday (and the subsequent 6)
- When I put it like that, it seems as though I am writing this for one person who already knows about everything I am going to write as though she needs reminding of her own holiday, her memories are probably clearer than mine, this seems pointless now, lets stop.

So carrying on, It all started ordinarily enough, we found a nice little place with a pool and crazy golf to while away the morning, I know it looks that way in the picture, but I am 98% certain that access wasn't gained by jumping the fence, we paid to be here using money and got wristbands and everything, zoom in on my hand, you'll see... what is probably that years Glastonbury wristband, the one for golf and swimming world must have been on the other wrist.

Our post pool-side frolicking and relaxation walk took us to a small pleasant beach, where we could engage in some far more serious sea-side frolicking and relaxation.


Beaches by themselves are fairly boring, they are! They are made more fun by the seas they sit next to, where you swim, jump over incoming waves and just generally lark about, once you leave the water and start to dry on the beach, the desire to re-enter the water steadily falls, in the same way, once you are dry, the desire to sit on the beach falls even faster. It was at this time that we decided that the rocky path to our left must just lead round to the other larger beach that we had been to on another day, so for a little change we thought we would walk along it and go there.



Perhaps it is worth stopping here for a moment to mention footwear, as everyone knows, the most suitable item of footwear to have with you on the beach is a pair of flip-flops, I don't think anyone will dispute that, it is also quite reasonable to expect that on any given beach based excursion, these will be the only piece of footwear you have with you. This was certainly the case for us on this particular occasion, it appears unimportant during the frolicking and relaxation parts of this story, but in the subsequent part it has slightly more significance.

As it turned out, the path did lead round to the other beach, but as it turned out it was much further away than we thought, not only that but it wasn't just a straightforward path, it meandered, at times opened out into grassy areas, but not before it completely narrowed at certain points to a tiny path no more than a foot wide with large cliff faces either side, the one on the left like a naturally occurring wall preventing us from moving any further away from the right hand sheer drop with a wonderful view of the waves crashing high on the rocks around us (pictured here on one of the wider sections) - Now might be a good time to remember the footwear thing, it turns out the appropriateness of flip-flops on the beach does not equate to appropriateness when cliff walking millimetres from a plunge to certain death.

Make sure to tune in to the next blog to find out if we survived long enough to go on any further holidays. The suspense will surely be difficult to bear