We’ve our Hungarian friends to thank. If it weren’t for them we would probably never have known that this was the day of the once-a-year event that is the walk across the sandbank to the island off Tanjung Rhu beach.
On any other day of the year the island lies two or three hundred metres away across open ocean. (It’s the one in the main picture on yesterday’s post.) But just this once, around dawn, the tide draws out and you can walk it. It takes quite a lot to get us up at 5.30 in the morning, but this was unmissable, so onto the scooter and off we went into the night.
Along with around (apparently) 3,000 others. Easy to believe. I’m glad we were on a scooter, not in a car. It’s a nice beach, and it has a reasonable sized car park. Probably takes 50 or 60 vehicles. People were parking back along the road, anything up to a mile away.
On the beach, the procession was already well in progress – a steady stream of little twinkling lights, out through the darkness – across the middle of the sea. We joined them; V in flip flops, me barefoot. Which was fine until I saw people pointing a torch at a spiny sea urchin. Oh dear, I thought, more or less. If I step on one of those I am in proper trouble. On we went.
All around us, people young and old, families, babes in arms, all wading through the ankle…um, knee…..er, approaching thigh deep water, in the pitch darkness, apart from the glow of mobile phone torches. Little groups huddled around sea urchins, starfish, and other generally well-hidden beasties of the deep.
After perhaps half an hour we arrived gratefully on the island, having picked up a sea urchin wound apiece: a shock and a sting for me; an embedded barb and a bit of drawn blood for Virle. Looking back, we could see the steady stream heading our way, as we waited for the sun to rise.
As the stars faded and the sky brightened, and more and more people turned up, the light took on a glow, replacing the previous Lowry-esque look with something more medieval, pre-Raphaelite, golden…
From our raised vantage point, we watched pathways shift, with breakaway groups finding new routes that offered shallower water, leaving those on the original track presumably gazing across at their parallel peers, thinking ‘why didn’t we go that way?’, until after an hour or so we decided to call it a day, and joined the raggle taggle columns heading back to the mainland.
No sooner had we reached the beach than the siren sounded, telling everyone ‘that’s all folks!’ Get back to land before the sea reclaims its rightful territory.
Until next year.
