I love Langland

I posted a couple of old family photos on a local Facebook page yesterday.

I seem to have mastered the reluctant photographee pose!

What amazes me is that I thought I was fat - and look how slim I am! So much time wasted hating my body and yet I still do it.

The Facebook page is called I love Langland and is aimed at people like me who grew up spending all their spare hours on the beach. That's Langland you can see in the first photo, with its iconic and much-sought-after beach huts. At that time there were cloth huts on the beach as well as wooden huts just behind the promenade. These days it's just the wooden huts, which are council-owned and applicants for the summer season go into a lottery to get a hut for one of two three-month periods. Fairly optimistic view of summer in Wales but at least with a hut you can sit in its shelter and have a nice cup of tea.

We frequented Little Langland, now known as Rotherslade. In those photos the tide is out but when it comes in Rotherslade becomes a separate beach. The trendy people went to Langland itself. I was never part of an in-crowd so sunbathed on Little Langland envious of those with more confidence, better looks, better bodies (!) than me.

Rotherslade with Langland in the distance

The big rock you see on the right of the beach is called Donkey Rock now but was previously known as Storr's Rock, and featured in a number of paintings by the Impressionist artist, Alfred Sisley. The one below was painted in 1897, when Rotherslade was known as Lady's Cove.