Sea Air and Salty Lungs

A weekend adventure on the UK South Coast

I’m buzzing with nerves and excitement when I meet friend-of-old Lydia at Littlehampton train station on the south coast of the UK at 5.30pm on a cold December evening.

We haven’t seen one another in over a year (I’ve been busy having babies and she’s been busy moving jobs and home, and getting loved up) but as is the case when you’ve known someone since you were sixteen… I know we’ll pick up right where we left off.

I’ve driven two and half hours from Gloucester to meet her and, after many half-baked plans for our time together, we ran out of planning beans and reduced the plan to: Let’s just run as far as we can on Saturday night, find somewhere to sleep — a hotel or a B&B and then get up and run as far as we can on Sunday morning.

I have felt shackled by the confines of my home and the small areas that surround it for the past year, so the prospect of a) leaving Gloucester and b) having a loose plan for where we end up is wildly exciting.

Even though there is no concrete goal I have it in my head that if we can make it 20 miles along the coast this weekend, then I will return home a happy girl. I’m not sure why it has to be 20. It just sounds like a nice round number.

I will add that there is little evidence to suggest that running 20 miles this weekend is possible or a good idea — I haven’t run beyond four miles in over three years. But Lydia is in the same boat and so our collective lack of physical preparation makes me feel at ease.

At least if I’m signing myself up for some pain and suffering, then she is, too. It’s always nicer to suffer together.

‘Lydiiaaaa!’ I find her standing outside the station, dressed like some kind of running ninja, all in dark clothes — black leggings with shorts over the top, a navy blue puffa jacket and a black hat. She’s already got her head torch affixed to her head and looks ready for action.

‘Oh my. What are we doing?’ She squeals as I release her from a hello hug.

‘I’m not sure, but it’s going to be awesome.’ I reply.

‘It’s so cold!’ She shivers and does a dance on the spot, hopping from one foot to the other.

‘Isn’t it?! It feels like Christmas out there.’ I smile.

And soon, we are off.

Running away from the train station with head torches blinking and teeth chattering, weaving through the backstreets of Littlehampton.

We pick up a trail alongside the River Arun and follow it to the estuary, and then the sea. After five minutes of running, the coastal trail leaves a well lit promenade and heads across a grassy patch of land. I flick my head torch from side to side and try to get my bearings.

There’s frost covering the grass, which transforms into a sea of silver and sparkles as we move across it.

To my right, pebbles are spilling from the beach onto the grass. It’s a dark night, and the moon isn’t yet full, so I can’t really see the sea — I can only make out the odd crest of a wave when the beam of my head torch catches it. But I can hear it — the crash of small waves onto the pebbles, and I can smell it. Cold, briny air.

We stop briefly at a signpost for the coastal trail and follow it off of the grass, into a patch of suburbia. I take great joy in tiptoeing down the centre of the deserted streets. Peering into living rooms as we pass, catching glimpses of families snuggled up on sofas under blankets, Christmas trees on display. Signs telling Santa to ‘Please Stop Here’, illuminated snowmen and many, many sparkly reindeer.

‘Err Anna, we’ve already done four miles!’ Lydia announces as her watch bleeps.

‘What? No way. The power of our chat is strong.’ I reply.

‘And… Oh my… that can’t be right?’ Lydia stops running and shakes her watch.

‘What?’

‘This says it’s minus three.’

‘No way!’

‘Hey Lyds, it’s minus three and we’re by the sea!’ I sing, opera style, as we take off running again.

And so, together, we forge on. Catching up on everything we’ve missed in one another’s lives over the past year — Lydia’s new relationship and her having, hopefully, found ‘the one’. My having gained some babies and lost myself.

We then move on to discussing the goings on in the lives of our mutual friends. One of them has, after many miscarriages, had a newborn baby. Another has just started a creative writing masters and is trying to fit it around two kids and a third friend — who’s like a brother to us — after decades of falling in love with the wrong girls (or not falling in love with the one who actually loved him) he has finally found Mrs Right. We’re protective of this male friend of ours and both agree that Mrs Right is a keeper.

Suburbia ends and we follow the trail around the front of a row of pale blue wooden beach huts and onto the pebble beach.

Running on the pebbles is hard work and my legs complain, but it doesn’t bother me too much. I’m still basking in the honeymoon phase of our little adventure. The cold air, the burning lungs, even the lurch in my stomach that says it’s been a long time since lunch. It’s uncomfortable and familiar. And I greet the pain like an old friend.

At 7.30pm we’re back on pavement and I spot a line of festoon lights, strung between lampposts alongside a promenade which leads to Worthing pier. We’ve run 9 miles and decide that Worthing, with its solid selection of hotels and B&B’s is a good place to stop. We grind to a halt at the start of the peer, take a selfie to mark the occasion and then book into the cheapest hotel we can find.

Drawn by the bright lights of a restaurant at the end of the pier, we then wander down there and pause outside the entrance. There are wine glasses laid out on tables, fancy dinners on posh plates and the food looks very boujee.

I look down at my bright sweaty leggings and then inspect my top which has caught a few wayward strands of snot in the wind along the coast. Lydia looks at me. I look at her.

‘Too posh?’ I say.

‘Too posh.’ She replies.

‘I spotted a fish and chips place back there, let’s do that?’ I offer.

‘Done!’

We retreat to a large and cheerful glass-fronted fish and chip shop opposite the entrance to the pier. It turns out to be a Greek restaurant too so, while I go to the toilet to slip out of a sweaty sports bra (my one luxury for this trip was packing a spare bra) Lydia orders up some tzatziki and bread for starters, as well as haddock and chips.

When I come back from the toilet, all the food is there, with the addition of two small bottles of Prosecco, already poured into glasses. Lydia looks very proud of herself.

‘You read my mind!’ I say, sitting down and raising my glass.

‘To our terrible ideas.’ I smile.

‘To our terrible ideas.’ Lyds replies as we clink glasses. The Prosecco is sweet, fizzy and delicious.

We spend the rest of the evening watching crap Saturday night TV in the wonky loft room of a nearby hotel with questionable carpet taste. I give a thought to missing my beautiful babies back home, but try not to dwell on it and slip into a peaceful slumber.

The following morning, our day starts in shock.

‘Errr Lyds…’ I say.

‘Mmm Hmm,’

‘I’m pretty sure we’ve overslept. It’s light out there.’

‘What?’ Lydia sits bolt upright. ‘But how? Did I not set the alarm?’ She says as I clamber out of bed and walk over to the dressing table to check the time on my phone.

‘Yup. It’s seven fifty-three.’ I say.

‘Oh bugger! Sorry!’ Lydia puts her hands over her face.

‘Don’t worry, I should have set mine as a backup!’ We’re silent for a moment, and I’m wondering what to do next.

‘Go?’ Lydia asks, raising one sleepy eyebrow.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ I reply and we swing into action — swirling around the room like two Tasmanian devils, pulling kit off of radiators, wriggling into leggings, grabbing at fistfuls of sports bra and stuffing anything we don’t need to wear into our backpacks.

Although it seems early, we’re already an hour behind schedule and I’m amazed neither one if us woke up naturally. We slept for over 11 and a half hours. That is insane. I haven’t slept that long in years.

Parenthood plays cruel tricks on your ability to sleep for long periods of time, after all. I have some vague recollection of waking up a lot during the night, but going straight back to sleep. The 11.5 hours of slumber are nothing short of a miracle.

That said, it’s a miracle which could cut the adventure short today. I have to be back at my car at Littlehampton train station by 11am. The original goal was to run as far as we could today and we both had our hearts set on making Brighton. But now that it’s 8am that gives us a total of three hours to run 13 miles to Brighton and make the return journey to Littlehampton.

The relaxed atmosphere from last night is long gone.

We tumble back out of the wonky loft room, back down the wonky stairs and into the (less wonky) reception area. After thrusting our room key at a bemused-looking receptionist, we push open the glass front doors and step into the frosty morning air. It’s drizzling and there’s a light fog hanging over the coast so it’s gloomy, but I feel strangely energised.

After yesterday’s run I’d expected to creak and groan my way out of bed but my legs feel… OK? I’m suspicious that they’re storing up their pain and will hit me with it in half an hour’s time, so I take my first few steps cautiously. My Achilles is sore and my right hip is having a grumble but other than that… I’m good. I take a moment to bask in the smugness and in my body’s ability to surprise me.

‘I think we can still make Brighton, you know.’ Says Lydia as we hit the promenade and start our journey east along the shore. I tussle with a reply in my mind. Part of me wants to just say ‘screw it’ to the timings I’ve agreed with Jamie and the kids. To think ‘what’s an extra hour if I want to keep running?’ But I made a promise. I promised I would be back by 2pm at home.

Then again, maybe I can do both. ‘Oh, we’re making `Brighton alright! But we need to put the burners on!’ I say, and the game is on.

We take off like women possessed. Which, to me, feels like we are flying, but I am sure if you were a passerby watching us, we would appear like bumbling tortoises. Still, who cares? I feel like I’m flying and that’s all that matters.

After 45 minutes of running in fog and drizzle, we divert from the seafront to grab coffee, pastries and orange juice from a nearby deli. This is the deli where we’d intended to have a leisurely breakfast, but there’s no time for that. We do a smash and grab on the goodies and eat them while walking a back to the beachfront.

We stop outside a set of public toilets. I hold Lydia’s half-eaten croissant while she goes for a wee. Then I stand outside the toilets, stuffing a last piece of maple pastry into my mouth and taking a last glug of coffee. When Lydia emerges, I hand her back the remains of her breakfast and we swap places. She finishes her breakfast while I wee. Pit stop done, we set off again.

We move along what remains of Widewater Lagoon — a inland body of water surrounded by funky looking wooden houses — and move on to running alongside the estuary of the River Adur.

At Kingston Beach, we stop briefly at an impressive looking RNLI lifeboat station. Nearby is a small shack next to the beach, which looks like it might once have been a shipping container, but it’s now clad in wood with a corrugated black metal roof. On one side of the shack there is a matching black half-roof which sits above a row of pegs with clothing hung along it. Emblazoned not the side in big letters, it reads ‘Nordic Sauna’.

‘Ooooh a sauna!’ I shout

‘That’s cool!’

‘I wonder who uses it?’ I say, looking out at the waves surging through the harbour. It looks gnarly out there.

There’s a group of people in wetsuits hanging out further along the beach and I’d love to run over and ask them all about the sauna and what they’re doing in the sea today, but time is short. So we take off again — pounding onwards through a spectacularly ugly section of coast. We run past a half-constructed carpark, an industrial yard selling plumbing supplies, a power station and then a sewage works.

The less-than-idyllic surroundings don’t dampen our spirits though and when we see a sign that says there’s just four miles to Brighton, we’re delighted. That’s not far at all! We’re doing better than expected.

I continue to feel fabulous until three miles to go. At which point my legs feel like lead, my right hip really starts to moan and Lydia seems to have found a new turn of speed. I am clinging on, conversing through gritted teeth and she is chatting merrily away.

One mile to go until Brighton Pier and I need something to break me out of the funk. We pass a woman coming out of the sea and it plants a thought in my head. I check my watch. If I get a taxi back to Littlehampton instead of a train, I could probably save a bit more time. We could still make it to Brighton, which would be 23 miles in total and I wouldn’t be late home.

The sea doesn’t look inviting. It’s brownish grey in colour and full of foaming white. The sea looks, for want of a better description, angry. Waves are piling onto the shore thick and fast, but they’re not rolling in — they’re slamming in. The way someone’s angry fist would pound on a table during an argument. Inviting it isn’t, but then again… I am inexplicably jealous of that woman coming out of the sea…

‘Lyds…’

‘Yep?’

‘What are the chances of me getting you in that sea?’ I ask.

‘What?’ she says.

‘For a dip? Fancy it?’

‘Have you got time?’ she asks.

‘Yeah, I’ll get a taxi and scrap the train. If you’ve got the will. I’ve got the time. Dippy-dippy?’

‘Oh god. Go on then, dippy-dippy!’

And in we go.

Hobbling over the pebbles, peeling off our sweaty bras, stripping to our underpants, attempting to go in to the sea and making it waist deep before the waves take our legs away and throw us over onto our arses.

I squeal and whoop and I try to regain my balance before the sea knocks me over again. I look over at Lydia, who is having a similar battle a few metres away.

And so there we are — semi-naked under a grey and cloudy sky, lying on our backs on slick pebbles on a cold December day, the brown-sea clawing at our whiter-than-white skin, bodies aching from miles of running and veins pumped full of last night’s fish and chips.

‘This is mad!’ I holler over the wind to Lydia.

‘It is! And I love it!’ She whoops.

‘Me too. Let’s do it again soon.’

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Restless Mumma. It’s an entirely reader supported publication, so if you fancied becoming a paid member of the community and supporting future storytelling with the cost of a coffee a month, I’d be super dooper grateful.