Cofete Beach Fuerteventura

I am not really a beach person, I quickly get bored, an hour is usually quite long enough  and I think that the invasive nature of sand is completely incompatible with the intimate nooks and crannies of the human body.  In selecting a favourite beach however this one wins hands down!

Cofete beach on Fuerteventura, which is one of the Canary Islands, which I visited on 21st November 2001.

Cofete is a small village in the south-western part of the Jandia peninsula in Fuerteventura and nearby it has a sandy windswept Atlantic facing beach that is about five kilometers long so gloriously empty that every person on it gets about a thousand square metres of  space all to themselves.  The beach is not really suitable for safe bathing and the advice is that you shouldn’t swim here unless you are Shiwan Ye or Michael Phelps because of the pounding waves, dangerous tides and the strong currents.

There is something curiously mysterious about it, deserted, solitary, lonely, and brooding away in the background are the eight-hundred metre high mountains of Jandia that seem to separate it from the inhabited holiday side half of the island.  The weather is almost always breezy, the waves are very high and the beach appears breathtakingly eerie but nevertheless beautiful.  There are never many people on the beach because it is so inaccessible and there are no lifeguards to rely on in an emergency.

To get there it is necessary to drive over twenty kilometres of track that in some places only allows for single file traffic.  Some of the passing places have steep drops to the side, and the journey can only realistically be tackled in a jeep or four-wheel drive vehicle and believe me it is a really uncomfortable journey, but one worth making nevertheless.  The route there goes through the very pretty Punta Pesebre, the Playa de los Ojos (Eyes beach), which is difficult to access, and the fishing port of Puerto de la Cruz before the lovely Playa de las Pilas.

If you want to sunbathe without any clothes on then this is the place to do it.   The beach is permanently deserted and there is enough private space to stretch out and enjoy the sun on the parts that it does not normally reach!  Some of the people on the beach were doing beach exercises this morning and I began to speculate about what were the three most dangerous athletics events for a naturist and I decided that they would just have to be the high jump, the pole vault because you certainly don’t want your exposed bits and pieces dangling about in mid-air and most of all, especially for a man, hurdling, the thought of the potential for painful injury makes my eyes water!

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More Beaches:

Ambleteuse, France

Galicia Blue Flag Beaches

Cofete Beach

Mwnt Beach, South Wales

Albufiera

Portimão, Carvoeiro, Praia Vale de Centianes and Silves

Portugal, Beaches and a Sunset

Kefalonia, Fiskardo and Assos

Kefalonia, Villages and Beaches

Kefalonia, Lassi and Hotel Mediterranee

Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Greece 2009 – Ios, Beaches and Naturists

Serifos Psili-Ammos

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Speedo Swimming Trunks

In 2007 I picked up some new swimming trunks in a sale and became the proud owner of a pair of blue Speedos with a go-faster white stripe.  Not real Speedos I have to confess just a pair of replicas. There were a number of good reasons for this, I was backpacking so they were nice and light, they dry out quickly when you get out of the sea or the swimming pool and they are much better than shorts for getting a sun tan.  Naturally I packed them and took them with me to Spain but once there I was subjected to a hurtful campaign of persistent ridicule and humiliation by my travelling companions.

Speedo originated in 1914 under the brand name ‘Fortitude‘ and it didn’t become known by its now famous brand name until 1928. The company was started by a young Scot called Alexander MacRae, who migrated to Australia in 1910, and set up an underwear manufacture business called MacRae Hosiery manufacturers.  MacRae was an astute businessman and in response to the growing beach culture in Australia, he quickly expanded his operations to include swimwear and introduced the classic figure-hugging “Racerback” costume that permitted greater freedom of movement and allowed wearers to swim faster.  This inspired a staff member to invent the slogan ‘Speed on in your Speedos‘ in a company competition and the Speedo name was adopted.

Four years later at the the 1936 Berlin Games the Australian swimming team all wore Speedo for the first time and after the Second-World-War Speedo quickly established itself, even opening a new factory to cope with increased demand for swimsuits including the bikini. Two-piece swimsuits for women had first appeared just before the war, but were not yet commonly regarded as decent and in fact the Speedo bikini was at first banned by Australian beach inspectors!  I digress here but isn’t being a beach inspector in Australia one of the best possible jobs in the World?

Speedos were good for sport and the Mexico Olympics of 1968 saw some brilliant performances, with 27 of the 29 gold medallists wearing the brand and in addition 22 out of the 23 world records set at the Games went to swimmers wearing Speedo.   At the Munich Olympics of 1972 21 out of the 22 world records were broken by swimmers wearing Speedo and 52 out of the 58 nations competing in the pool were wearing them.  In 2008 in its eightieth year, Speedo launched the fastest and most technically advanced swimsuit in the world and at the ninth World Swimming Championships in April, 35 World records were broken in the swimwear.  On 17^th August Michael Phelps won his eight gold medal wearing Speedos!  This swim suit is so good that some people have challenged whether it is fair but that sounds like sour grapes to me.

Aesthetically, Speedos for men are associated with energy and fitness, speed and grace, but admittedly they are not entirely suitable for less athletic body types that include those that are overweight, those that are wrinkling or sunburnt or those in the throes of a mid-life crisis.  On the other hand for those of us like me that are in peak physical condition they are perfect for the beach and that’s why I like to wear them when going on holiday or visiting the pool.

The fashionability of speedos varies greatly in different parts of the world.  They are commonly worn by men of all ages in regions such as Asia, Australia, South America and mainland Europe and in China and Japan men almost exclusively wear speedos as swimwear.  In some countries, speedo-style briefs are often compulsory in public or resort swimming pools, in France for example it is common to see “slip de bain obligatoire, shorts interdits” or “swimming briefs required, no shorts allowed” because this is considered to be a matter of hygiene and public health, as shorts which might have been worn as streetwear prior to entering the pool may be dirty and pollute the water.

It’s a strange thing that the French, who as a Nation are unlikely to win any prizes for personal hygiene get almost hysterical about observing excessive standards at the lido.  The Los Angeles Times once reported the shocking results of a series of polls and studies that over 50% of French men and women do not take a bath or shower daily and 40% of men and 25% of women don’t change their underwear daily.     What’s more, 50% of men and 30% of women don’t use deodorant.  All of this strikes me as being a bit hypocritical and once in France I went to a thalassotherapy swimming pool at an Ibis hotel at Chatelaillon Plage, near La Rochelle on the west coast, but the list of hygiene regulations was so excessive and absurdly expensive to conform with that I decided against it and went to the beach instead.

In contrast to Europe, more modest styles are the most common swimsuit style for men in the United States and Canada where the speedo is seen as too revealing, unfashionable on some people or associated with homosexuality (how very dare they!) and one of the most common American fashion complaints is that Speedos are worn by “the wrong people.” A lot of the fashion preference in this region appears to be the result of the negative stereotypical image of the overweight, elderly, and excessively hairy European walking on the beach in a speedo-styled suit.   I’ve been to America. they obviously don’t have mirrors there.  In the USA 31% of the population are obese and therefore unsuitable for Speedos compared with only about 15% in Europe.  Ok, we (the UK) at 23% bring the average up a bit but that’s beside the point.

In Australia the home of the Speedo swimsuit and, at 22%, the third fattest people in the World, a recent store sales estimate indicated that Speedos are the preferred swimsuit for men where they are often referred to as “budgie smugglers” or “banana hammocks” beating out boardshorts (known as “boardies“) by 3 to 2.  And only the Aussies could come up with descriptive names like that!

A Year in a Life – 21st November, Cofete Beach Fuerteventura

I am not really a beach person, I get quickly bored and I think that sand is completely incompatible with the intimate nooks and crannies of the human body.  In selecting a favourite beach however this one wins hands down!

Cofete beach on Fuerteventura, which is one of the Canary Islands, which I visited on 21st November 2001.

Cofete is a small village in the south-western part of the Jandia peninsula in Fuerteventura and nearby it has a sandy windswept Atlantic facing beach that is about five kilometers long so gloriously empty that every person on it gets about a thousand square metres of  space all to themselves.  The beach is not really suitable for safe bathing and the advice is that you shouldn’t swim here unless you are Sharon Davis or Duncan Goodhew because of the high waves and the strong current.

There is something curiously mysterious about it, deserted, solitary, lonely, and brooding away in the background are the eight-hundred metre high mountains of Jandia that seem to separate it from the inhabited holiday side half of the island.  The weather is almost always breezy, the waves are very high and the beach appears breathtakingly eerie but nevertheless beautiful.  There are never many people on the beach because it is so inaccessible and there are no lifeguards to rely on in an emergency.

 

To get there it is necessary to drive over twenty kilometres of track that in some places only allows for single file traffic.  Some of the passing places have steep drops to the side, and the journey can only realistically be tackled in a jeep or four-wheel drive vehicle and believe me it is a really uncomfortable journey, but one worth making nevertheless.  The route there goes through the very pretty Punta Pesebre, the Playa de los Ojos (Eyes beach), which is difficult to access, and the fishing port of Puerto de la Cruz before the lovely Playa de las Pilas.

If you want to sunbathe without any clothes on then this is the place to do it.   The beach is permanently deserted and there is enough private space to stretch out and enjoy the sun on the parts that it does not normally reach!  Some of the people on the beach were doing beach exercises this morning and I began to speculate about what were the three most dangerous athletics events for a naturist and I decided that they would just have to be the high jump, the pole vault because you certainly don’t want your exposed bits and pieces dangling about in mid-air and most of all, especially for a man, hurdling.  Imagine slapping your dangly bits into the cross beam every ten metres or so, the thought of it makes my eyes water!

Family Holidays

I haven’t been on a proper holiday in the United Kingdom since 1986 when I went to Wales in a self-catering chalet near Caernarfon and it rained so much that the wooden chalet leaked and it was so cold and damp that I gave up after four days, returned home and vowed never to do it again.

Since then I have spent my summer holidays on Mediterranean beaches where the sun is guaranteed, the beer is always cold and ladies go topless.  It wasn’t always like this of course.

When I was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s family holidays came once a year and were rotated tri-annually between a caravan in Norfolk, a caravan in Cornwall and a caravan in Wales.  I’m not being ungrateful because these holidays were great fun and in those days it was all that my parents could afford.

To be perfectly honest the very idea of going to Europe was totally absurd, I knew of people who had been to France or Spain of course (or said that they had) but I always regarded them as slightly eccentric and certainly unusual.  As for going further than Europe we might as well have made plans to go to the moon!

In the 1950s about twenty-five million people went on holiday in England as life returned to normal after the war.  Most people went by train but we were lucky because granddad had a car, an Austin 10 four-door saloon, shiny black with bug eye lights, a starting handle, pop out indicators and an interior that had the delicious smell of worn out leather upholstery, which meant that we could travel in comfort and style.

Although there were not nearly so many cars on the road in the 1950s this didn’t mean that getting to the seaside was any easier.

There were no motorways or bypasses and a journey from Leicester to the north Norfolk coast involved driving through every town and bottleneck on the way which meant sitting around in traffic jams for hours and worrying about the engine overheating.  Well, I didn’t worry obviously but I’m sure the driver did.  Just getting to the coast could take the whole day and usually involved stopping off along the route at some point for a rest and a picnic.  Granddad would find a quiet road to turn off into and then when there was a convenient grass verge or farm gate he would pull up and the adults would spread a blanket on the ground and we would all sit down and eat sandwiches and battenburg cake and they would drink stewed tea from a thermos flask and I would have a bottle of orange juice.

I seem to remember that one of the favourite places to go on holiday at that time was Mundesley which is about ten miles south of Cromer where there were good sandy beaches and lots of caravans.  I last stayed in a caravan in about 1970 and I have vowed never ever to do it again.  I just do not understand caravanning at all or why people subject themselves to the misery of a holiday in a tin box with no running water, chemical toilets and fold away beds, there is no fun in it whatsoever.

In 2000 the National Statistics Office estimated that British families took 4,240,000 towed caravan holidays a year year; how sad is that?  To be fair I suppose it was good fun when I was a five-year-old child but I certainly wouldn’t choose to do it now when I am ten times older.  Caravans simply had no temperature control, they were hot and stuffy if the sun shone (so that wasn’t too much of a problem, obviously) and they were cold and miserable when it rained, which I seem to remember was most of the time.

Bad weather didn’t stop us going to the beach however and even if it was blowing a gale or there was some drizzle in the air we would be off to to enjoy the sea.  If the weather was really bad we would put up a windbreak and huddle together inside it to try and keep warm.  Most of the time it was necessary to keep a woolly jumper on and in extreme cases a hat as well and Wellington boots were quite normal.  As soon as the temperature reached about five degrees centigrade or just slightly below we would be stripped off and sent for a dip in the wickedly cold North Sea in a sort of endurance test that I believe is even too tough to be included as part of Royal Marine Commando basic training.

I can remember one holiday at Walcote, Norfolk, in about 1965 when it was so cold that there was a penguin on the beach!  After the paddle in the sea we would cover ourselves up in a towel and making sure we didn’t reveal our private parts struggled to remove the sopping wet bathing costume and get back to our more sensible woolly jumpers.  Then we would have a picnic consisting of cheese and sand sandwiches and more stewed tea from a thermos flask.

If the sun did ever come out we used to get really badly burnt because when I was a boy sunscreen was for softies and we would regularly compete to see how much damage we could do to our bodies by turning them a vivid scarlet and then waiting for the moment that we would start to shed the damaged skin off.  After a day or two completely unprotected on the beach it was a challenge to see just how big a patch of barbequed epidermis could be removed from the shoulders in one piece and the competition between us was to remove a complete layer of skin in one massive peel, a bit like stripping wallpaper, which would leave you looking like the victim of a nuclear accident.

We didn’t always go to Norfolk and we didn’t always stay in caravans.  If we went on holiday with Mum’s parents who lived in London we would get a train to Herne Bay or Margate in north Kent and stay at a holiday camp in a chalet which was just about one step up from a caravan.  Actually my grandparents were probably some of the first people that I knew who went abroad for their holidays when in the mid 1960s they went to Benidorm and came back with gifts of flamenco dancers and bullfighters and I can remember thinking how marvellous that sort of travel must be.  I went to Benidorm myself in 1975 and although the sun shone most of the time I think on reflection I probably preferred Mundesley and Herne Bay.

Beach holidays in the fifties and sixties were gloriously simple.  We would spend hours playing beach cricket on the hard sand, investigating rock pools and collecting crabs and small fish in little nets and keeping them for the day in little gaily coloured metal buckets before returning them to the sea at the end of the day.  There were proper metal spades as well with wooden handles that were much better for digging holes and making sand castles than the plastic things that replaced them a few years later.  Inflatable beach balls and rubber rings, plastic windmills on sticks and kites that were no more than a piece of cloth (later plastic), two sticks and a length of string that took abnormal amounts of patience to get into the air and then the aeronautical skills of the Wright brothers to keep them up there.

I remember beach shops before they were replaced by amusement arcades with loads of cheap junk and beach games, cricket sets, lilos, buckets and spades, rubber balls and saucy seaside postcards.  I can remember dad and his friend Stan looking through them and laughing and as I got older and more aware trying to appear disinterested but sneaking a look when I thought no one was watching.  For a treat there was fish and chips a couple of nights a week but this was in the days before MacDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken so most of the catering and the eating was done in the caravan or the chalet or if we were really unlucky in the dining room of the holiday camp.  I think that this is what put me off school dinners later in life.  I once worked in a holiday camp kitchen, at Butlins on Barry Island in 1973 and based on what I saw believe me you really don’t want to eat in a holiday camp restaurant because it isn’t Masterchef I can assure you.

Later, after dad learned to drive, we used to go to Cornwall and Devon and North Wales, to the Nalgo holiday camp at Croyde Bay and the Hoseasons holiday village at Borth, near Aberystwyth.  The last time I went on the family holiday like that was in 1971 to Llandudno and by my own confession I was a complete pain in the arse to everybody and I don’t remember being invited ever again.  In 1975 I went to Sorrento in Italy and nothing has ever persuaded me to go back to British holidays in preference to travelling in Europe.