Spectacular holidays for people who love the sea
Ah, the romance of the ocean: the rapturous splash of waves on sand, the whisper of a coquettish breeze, the sensual invigoration of a swim. All of us at some time in our lives, have discovered the sea is our ultimate playground. The personal recollections shared by The Telegraph writers over these pages only confirm its boundless seductions. In it, on it, under it, beside it, what would holidays be without the sea?
But then what would the sea be without holidays? Our perception of the sea is almost entirely a construct of the holiday industry.
Until tourism came along no one -really knew what the sea was for. Historically it was treated as a disobliging extension of land. Wet and unwieldy, it required endless compromises for -humans to exercise their basic survival instincts for hunting, farming, transport and war. All were made infinitely more complicated. It invalidated the -invention of the wheel and the use of horses. The sea, frankly, was a menace.
In the Mediterranean it was the second and third sons who were bequeathed land on the coast; the firstborn got the valuable arable acres inland. The folk on the shore eked a -living from fishing. Boats were tools of the trade, not vessels of pleasure; few coast-dwellers could swim. When they weren’t being thrown about by the swell, they spent their days interminably mending their nets, cursing the weather and resenting their siblings’ olive trees.
Even in the 19th century, when city dwellers began taking trips to the sea by the trainload, they had little idea of what to do when they got there. Some thought they should drink it. Otherwise they would just look at it. Piers took them out to sea without their having to leave land. I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside, went the song: not in it.
The idea of immersing oneself was preposterous. For a start, that entailed disrobing. As late as 1907, a woman wearing a sleeveless swimming costume in America was charged with indecent exposure. “Bathing” meant spas, and had done for centuries, but spas were therapeutic. That same healthy notion was what first attracted the upper classes to the seaside in Britain and Germany in the 18th century.
As a species we may have emerged from the ocean but it took almost 400 million years before we were prepared to return. In Europe the metamorphosis was at its most flamboyant in the South of France. The combination of sea and sunshine – something else that had never been fashionable – was an intoxicant.
Phobias, inhibitions and clothes were discarded; rundown fishing -villages became priceless real estate; water sports were invented, theatres built, the kind of grand hotel that had previously been built up mountains came down to the coast, and in 1894 Blackpool opened a 518ft iron tower. The sea had become one of the great liberating influences of life.
Like so many people, my earliest memories come from the sea: carefree childhood days with my cousins at St Davids in Pembrokeshire. We were like characters from an Arthur Ransome novel, our exploits bathed in seemingly endless sunshine, summer and escapades. Endless childhood. It was a time of Aertex shirts, calamine lotion (for sunburn), shrimp nets, picnics, Thermos flasks, sandals and innocence.
We swam from huge sand beaches, which we considered crowded if there were two other families in sight. We scrambled over rocks and paddled and dabbled in pools. In my uncle’s motorboat, we puttered out to the craggy little islands of Skomer, where thousands of puffins nested – and still do – and Ramsey, where we were sure to spot seals. On the way we laid lobster pots. We raced to the lifeboat station at St Justinians when the maroons went off like sonic booms to summon the crew. Worming our way to the front of a small crowd, we would watch the lifeboat hurtle down its slipway and crash into the Atlantic through a great white ruff of spume.
I went to school by sea – to America on the old Queen Elizabeth – and in my working life the sea has taken me to the ends of the earth – through the Northwest Passage in the Arctic and to Captain Scott’s hut in the Antarctic. In the tropics, I have sailed by supply vessel through the South Pacific to the Marquesas Islands, an archipelago of iridescent beauty as distant from a continental land mass as it is possible to go. I have been to sea in square riggers and dugout canoes, in ice breakers, freighters and racing yachts. From inflatable Zodiac expedition boats I have watched whales breaching in Canada and tracked brown bears foraging along the shore in the American Aleutian Islands; I have dived off the Great Barrier Reef, landed amid a colony of half a million king penguins on South Georgia, and witnessed a “haul-out” of 200 walruses in Siberia.
In a converted Japanese fishing boat, I sailed among the blue footed boobies and swimming lizards of the Galápagos Islands. This dusky clump of spent volcanoes, strung along the equator, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, and teeming with wildlife, has become a paradigm for man’s relationship with the natural world. The challenge now, set so graphically by Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II documentary, is to ensure the oceans’ future. Holidays gave us the sea; as holidaymakers we know better than anyone exactly how precious it is.
Wild swimming
It all began in a chine on the Isle of Wight. The beach that my parents took us to had no direct access. Reaching it involved a cliff-top walk that skirted a hairy bit of precipice and which ended with a final scramble down a short slope to a stretch of sun-spangled shingle.
Shelving steeply into clear water this was like no beach I’d ever seen. Slipping in to cool off I experienced, for the first time, the pure and visceral joy of open water. For the rest of that holiday I abandoned myself to the sea.
Wild swimming breaks
I’ve since frolicked in seas far and wide but memories of those formative swims have stuck. Now, I enjoy it for the pure pleasure of pounding the water ? free of lanes, chlorine and other people ? and for the buzz that freedom affords. I enjoy the dizzy sensation of floating under an open sky and of seeing the shore from a different perspective. I relish the companionable solitude of bobbing in my private place. Occasionally I recall my 14-year-old self, escaping not just my parents and younger siblings, but the naturists with whom we shared that piece of paradise each summer.
It can be hard work, holidaying with a sea swimmer. Daily schedules must account for at least one swim. A beach is not a prerequisite (though decent goggles are). Some of the best swims are those that fling you straight into the briny ? from boats; rocks; even a concrete platform. If it’s a beach it must be a “swimming” beach and not knee high, clobbered by waves or inhibited by dangerous currents and pleasure craft. A bay would be nice but isn’t essential; a rocky promontory for underwater observation is a boon. Ideal temperature? Between 62.6F and 69.8F (17 and 21C). Any warmer and you lose the delicious separation between water and skin; any cooler and you might be out sharpish.
Recently, in North Devon, I spied a cove with two sheltered beaches tucked below the wooded cliffs of the South West Coast path. Blue and becalmed, this water had no business being in Britain. Our group of four (three toe-dippers and me) had been walking for much of the day. We’d run out of water and it was hot. At the head of some steep steps an out-of-puff dog walker reliably informed us it was 230 steps down… and up again. Like a puppy begging favours I looked at my friends. We were going down. In the UK, where the sea has moods, every swim is different. Evening is my favourite, when the waning sun paints a line of liquid light across the water. Drawn by the reflection, nose level with the water, it’s the liquid equivalent of chasing rainbows.
SwimTrek (01273 739713; swimtrek.com) has a week’s guided swimming holiday in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly staying on the square rigger, Lady Avenel. From ￡1,390pp this September including meals and a swimming escort. For advice on safe swimming in open water see telegraph.co.uk/tt-safe-swimming.
Teresa Machan
Beach bliss
Seaside jaunts are the Italian cuisine of family holidays; eschewing complicated constructions, they rely on simple, perfect ingredients – sand, sun and sea – which require no doctoring to shine. Where skiing is all conditions and equipment and cultural breaks made or broken by the quality of the guide, a beach holiday is simple and straightforward: you came, you saw, you relaxed.
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Even if the sun forsakes you the wealth of possibilities in the sea and sand, the simultaneous movement of the water and utter lack of change in the overall landscape will entertain for hours. In February, at Trevaunance Cove, on Cornwall’s northern coast, under a moody but bright sky, my children and dog chased the tide by the hour, taking breaks to stack stones or comb rock pools for signs of life. Three months later in Crete, we donned snorkelling masks and searched again for life, deeper in the water this time.
Each summer we visit family in the Languedoc, where the lazy Med is the perfect learner’s pool. Later in the summer, another trip to see the grandparents takes us to southern New England’s Narragansett Bay, where the waves are giant, the water colder, and the aesthetic entirely different. And yet, the pleasure in each spot is fundamentally the same. You might pay thousands of pounds for exclusivity, or you might pay pennies, rolling up to your stretch of sand on a public bus. Either way, once there, it is the essential elements that bring the greatest pleasure. Perhaps more important than the economic egalitarianism of the seaside, its value – and greatest joy – lies in the way it bridges generations: there is something humbling about getting down on all fours, barely clad, to dig with your child or grandchild.
The seaside holiday grows with a family: when children are young, accessibility and support are essential, making Cornwall (no plane necessary) and Greek hotels (direct flights, guaranteed weather and childcare; try Sani in Halkidiki or Porto Elounda, in Crete) attractive. Then there is a magical period – around ages three until eight – when the prospect of an empty beach is heavenly; head to a dune-backed under-developed area around the Med (I love Les Cabanes de Fleury, in the Languedoc), Holkham in Norfolk, or the southernmost beaches in New England (around Watch Hill in Rhode Island) with just a bucket, a picnic, and a few good books, and you should be happy all day long. For the more social years – tweens and teens – you’ll want activities. Whether this is a Mark Warner-style hotel with on-site water sports or just a villa with friends in a Mediterranean village – the formula is constant: water, sea, sky.
For true beachside living, Simpson Travel (0208 003 6557; simpsontravel.com) offers one-week stays at Apothikes Beach Suites in Crete from ￡1,068 per person, including accommodation, flights and car hire.
Bring friends for a classic seaside escape in St Mawes at the immaculate Dreamcatchers (sleeps 10; ￡5,450 per week via stmawesretreats.co.uk).
Sally Peck
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Ducking and diving
To be truly thrilled by the sea, you have to get under it – and that’s what I’ve been doing for 40 years, from the teeming reefs of the Maldives and Papua New Guinea to the bottom of a Scottish loch the colour of black tea. For me, it’s not about depth records or derring-do. It’s more like going for a ramble underwater, among forests of gorgonian sea fans resembling giant ferns, thickets of staghorn coral like hillsides covered in bracken, “wild flower meadows” of psychedelic sponges, clearings where you might spot an octopus crossing the sand, caves and rock formations harbouring the marine equivalent of bats, frogs and butterflies. Any birdwatcher will relate to spotting and identifying any of the 230,000 known marine species, from clown anemone fish (think Nemo) to neon-bright nudibranchs (sea slugs).
There’s always the chance, too, that you might spot something that transforms your Lake District walk into a safari game drive: a lone grey shark on the fringe of visibility, a batlike manta ray with a 15ft wingspan, a school of torpedo-like tuna or 200 hammerhead sharks hanging in the blue – and that’s the buzz of diving: you never know what you will see.
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In the Orkney Islands it might be one of 74 German warships deliberately sunk in the sheltered Scapa Flow inlet after the First World War. Most were salvaged but eight remain intact and can be dived with a local operator. Water temperatures can be as low as 44.6F (7C), meaning this is serious drysuit territory – but it’s possible to do a drysuit course followed by a training dive before tackling the 500ft light cruiser SMS Coln, say, at a depth of 90ft.
At the other extreme is Spirit of Freedom, a 120ft liveaboard boat that cruises the outer reaches of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, with sharks, minke whales, turtles and giant potato cod among the sightings. It’s intense but exhilarating, packing in five or six dives a day (the first at 6.30am, the last at night) – like fell running rather than a country walk, to extend the metaphor.
Scapa Scuba (01856 851218; scapascuba.co.uk) offers drysuit courses for ￡195 and a day of wreck diving at Scapa Flow for ￡185, including equipment.
A three-day trip on Spirit of Freedom (spiritoffreedom.com.au) costs ￡1,017 per person, based on four sharing a cabin. Flights and equipment cost extra.
Andrew Purvis
Coastal walking
To walk along a cliff-top with a gannet’s eye view of the water is one of life’s great pleasures. The constant movement of the sea, the myriad hues of blue that can only be appreciated from on high, and the chance of spotting a seal, a surfer or a super-yacht all enhance the experience. To protect against glare and see beneath the surface, it’s well worth investing in a good pair of polarised sunglasses; Maui Jim makes the best.
The most satisfying coastal walking is not along beaches but around rugged headlands where the views change with the miles, revealing hidden coves, tiny fishing hamlets and ancient fortified villages clinging like limpets to plugs of rock.
This combination of scenic eye-candy and cultural curiosity is a feature of the Italian coastline, especially the wild flower carpeted Gargano in Puglia, the medieval villages of Liguria’s Cinque Terre, and the magnificent cliffscape of the Sorrento peninsula and offshore Capri.
The Amalfi coast in particular has stunning vistas from a roller-coaster trail worn smooth by the feet of time.
It takes a week to walk from the terraced lemon groves of Ravello through Amalfi and Positano to the busy resort of Sorrento. The most exhilarating stretch, easily tackled in a day, is the Path of the Gods (Sentiero degli Dei) between Praiano and Positano.
After a steep climb to the Convent of San Domenico, the path winds around a succession of wild hillsides that fall away dramatically into the sea. Simple restaurants in Nocelle, an eyrie above the Mediterranean, serve delicious fresh pasta and lemon soda for lunch. Weather apart, I would say that the 300 miles of the Cornish coast give Amalfi a run for its money.
Walking the Land’s End peninsula is a particular pleasure as the old landed estates have helped preserve its beaches and bays from modern development.
One of the most beautiful stretches is from Porthcurno to Land’s End, a three-hour trail that takes in the cliff-top Minack Theatre and Porthgwarra used to film the Nampara beach scenes in BBC’s Poldark.
There’s a good network of taxis and buses to ferry walkers.
On Foot Holidays (01722 322652; onfootholidays.co.uk) has a six-night independent itinerary along the Amalfi coast for ￡905 per person including b&b in small resort hotels, luggage transport, excellent mapping and trail notes.
Martin Hunt (01209 820847; adventureline.co.uk), who knows his history and botany, runs one-week guided coastal walks on the Porthcurno to Land’s End route from ￡728 per person, based in b&bs.
Gill Charlton
Sailing
It is the sudden, exhilarating sense of freedom – the instant when the sails billow and catch the wind, and the yacht beneath them leaps forward and crests the waves, like a racehorse bolting from its stable.
Harnessing the wind to power a craft through the water is a revelation like no other. Add a sense of adventure, bracing sea air and the sound of waves chuckling along the hull and one understands our age-old compulsion to go down to the sea in ships. There are no roadworks or traffic jams at sea, only horizons beckoning sailors to discover new landfalls wherever wind and whims take them.
In my case it was the Firth of Clyde, where I had my first taste of sailing on a week-long dinghy course before graduating to an old wooden sloop bought from a friend.
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The west coast of Scotland is arguably the finest cruising ground in the UK, with relatively sheltered waters and anchorages in a maze of islands and sea lochs that offer excitement and tranquillity in equal measure.
Largs and Oban have popular marinas for chartering yachts to explore coastal highlands and Hebrides as you may never have seen them before, with only seals and red deer for company, and skippers available to do the technical stuff like pointing the boats in the right direction.
This is the option I took later on a sailing holiday with friends in the British Virgin Islands, once the lair of pirates. By then I had acquired Royal Yachting Association qualifications, but decided to enlist the services of a local skipper on the grounds that he or she would know the best places to head for. And so it proved.
A fragmented jigsaw in a turquoise sea east of Cuba, with a balmy climate and steady easterly trade winds, the islands are a Magic Kingdom for sailors. Our skipper duly chartered a course in the wake of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard past palm-fringed desert isles to a hidden bay where the skull and crossbones still fluttered – over an al fresco restaurant.
By night, framed by dark wooded hills, the bay was bathed in ghostly moonlight that shimmered on the water like mercury. An old salt once observed that the closest thing to dreams made by the hands of man is a sailing boat. He was right of course.
The Royal Yachting Association (023 8060 4100; rya.org.uk) has sailing courses throughout the UK
Yachts can be chartered in the UK and overseas with or without skippers from companies such as Sunsail (0808 109 8666; sunsail.co.uk) and The Moorings (0330 332 1513 moorings.co.uk). Many offer the option of flotilla sailing in the company of kindred spirits.
Gavin Bell
Island-hopping
It was that first crossing of the Channel by ferry. I’d been to the seaside before and paddled on the shore, but this was the first time I had actually been at sea.
As I stood on the deck watching the white cliffs of Dover recede, a strong breeze running through my hair and the intoxicating scent of the sea and the sound of the gulls all around me, I felt the surge of excitement some of those great early explorers must have felt, setting out to explore lands as yet unknown.
OK, landing in Calais following a ferry ride of just under three hours hardly compares with the discovery of the Americas after crossing the Atlantic by Christopher Columbus, but for an impressionable young boy it triggered a similar tingling sense of anticipation.
I love the romance of sea journeys, the very real sense they give you of the physicality involved in crossing from one land to another and the great masses of water that divide them. We can look at a map and see that thin strip of water separating England and France but it is only when you navigate it yourself that you appreciate its texture and ever-changing colours; its swells and contours, beautifully still one day, wavy, choppy and stomach-churning on others. There are seas offering more scenic variations on the theme and over the years I’ve savoured the deep blue waters of the Aegean and the turquoise treasures off the coast of Turkey; I’ve coursed through the Caribbean Sea and the Indian Ocean; this summer I fell under the hypnotic spell of the Baltic as I island-hopped around Stockholm’s spectacularly beautiful archipelago.
I have also been lucky enough to complete one of the great seafaring – and indeed travel – experiences – crossing the Atlantic by ship.
Unlike those early explorers, I sailed in considerable comfort on board Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, the world’s only proper ocean liner.
We were at sea for five days and I never tired of the sheer majesty of the ocean and the infinite variety of its moods. Of course there was lots to do on board – from dining to dancing to drinking in the glamour of an admittedly rose-tinted view of the glory days of travel.
But there was also time to sit and marvel and lose yourself in the vastness and the power of the ocean; to reflect on those who had sailed before you – from Columbus to the pilgrims who travelled to the New World in the hope of a better life to the unfortunates who sailed on the Titanic to the celebrities of the modern age such as Elizabeth Taylor and Rita Hayworth for whom this journey was a rite of passage.
This is an experience of the sea of another magnitude, placing so much else in true perspective.
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P&O Ferries (0800 130 0030; poferries.com) and DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235; dfds.co.uk) offer crossings from Dover to Calais from about ￡80 return (car plus up to nine passengers).
Cunard (0843 374 2224; cunard.co.uk) has regular transatlantic cruises from about ￡1,000 per person, including return flight.
Adrian Bridge