By: Blonde Two

Irony is a wonderful thing, well sometimes it is! On Thursday I wrote Friday’s blog post about the water cure, swimming and not having a cold. On Friday I partook of the water cure, went sea swimming and developed a stinker of a cold!

Which meant that on Saturday morning at swim-time I was lounging in bed feeling sorry for myself… that is until someone mentioned cave swimming! Cave swimming sounded so exciting that I was out of bed and into my swimsuit before I could emit the next sneeze.

And there was no disappointment. The rather mystical ‘Hindu Caves’ are in what felt to me like a secret location along Torbay’s seafront; one of those places that is made even more clandestine by its nearness to civilisation. It was high tide so in order to get there we had to:

a. Run to avoid the waves.
b. Balance along some slippy rocks (balancing not being my forte!)
c. Scramble (if you are me) walk (if you are anybody else) up some less slippy rocks.
d. Slide (if you are me) jump (if you are brave) into some chilly but turquoise sea.
e.) Swim over to the cliffs (in the chilly but turquoise sea).

In my kayaking days I was never too keen on paddling into caves so I swam near but not in. However, near was impressive enough; the red rocks were a marvellous contrast to the dull-jewel sea and the caves were such weird and wonderful shapes they conjured up imaginings of ‘A Passage to India’ and the echoes that so bothered those poor ladies.

After an exhilarating but strangely hypnotic swim I had a bit of a bothersome moment myself. Getting out onto rocks in a slightly swelling sea is not as easy as it might look. I have a lovely, scraped bruise to show for my adventure and I believe the barnacles may have exfoliated my bottom!

PS There is some thing rather surprising you should know about barnacles…