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WRITING|CREATIVE WRITING
The Simple Joy of Walking Near the Sea
Water was always there. But then, land joined, too
I was born and raised five minutes away from Havana’s famous Malecón. Over the centuries this seawall has become one of my city’s landmarks, as important as The Morro Castle, or Revolution Square.
The ocean was both background and foreground to my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood years. On Malecón’s hard wall I sat many a night with friends, sharing songs, stories, and rum, sometimes until sunrise.
Unsurprisingly, walking in nature never appealed to me. I grew up surrounded by concrete.
This was on my mind recently when I was in Hastings with my partner and we both hiked part of the Stade trail. This 6.4-mile route is not too challenging, although it does include some steep inclines. Looking out to the sea from the lush vegetation around us, I realised that Cuba had given me the sea and the UK the land.
I’ve hiked in the Peak District, Gloucestershire, and Spain’s Las Alpujarras. I’ve dipped my hands in the waters of the English Channel and the Mediterranean.
To paraphrase Joan Manuel Serrat in his song Mediterráneo, when I die, “bury me, with no mourning, between the woods and the beach”.
