Long Bay Beaches

I like to think I was born on a beach. It's very nearly true because what was then called the European Hospital, Dar-es-Salaam, was a stone's throw from one. Dar-es-Salaam means the 'haven of peace', and....

....I think it was, for a small child in such a balmy climate, very much a place of peace. We certainly spent many long and happy hours on the beaches around Dar, with my mother and the kikapu which contained our swimming things and picnic. Occasionally, my father came along.

The Dar beaches and, after we moved to Mombasa, most of the beaches to north and south of that town were what I would call 'long bay beaches'. Typically, they were half-a-mile or more long, sandy, and curved away gently to end against a headland. We spent as much time on them as possible. The East African beaches fringed a lagoon which, because it was protected by a barrier reef, was very safe for swimming and abounded in all sorts of marine life - coral, shellfish, octopus, crustaceans, and fish. This photograph of the beach at Nyali, long before it became crowded with tourists, a picture which brings back so many happy memories, is courtesy Tony Chetham.

The type specimen for a 'long bay beach' is this one, the beach at Long Bay on the less fashionable east coast of Jamaica. A small hotel, Ports of Call, sat on that beach and it was a place we went to as often as we could to escape the heat and hassle of Kingston. We, our two mothers, and several friends will remember the peace of this beach.

Here's another superb Jamaican beach of this type. It's Malcolm Bay near the town of Black River on Jamaica's southwest coast and, on the day we visited, it was absolutely deserted. 

Now we are passing our declining years close to a Scottish version of a 'long bay beach'. It's not as exotic as those of East Africa and Jamaica but it's often as deserted as we remember the lovely beaches of our younger years.