This place suddenly leapt to mind again this morning, a vivid landscape stripped to the barest essentials of sand and sea and sky, a picture that was so immediate and real I might have been there. I don't understand these memory bursts, these images dug up from a dusty album in my brain and thrown at me for only a moment, like a rocket bursting. Why there? Why then? Why now? It's not for any reason I can find.
As is quite typical, it wasn't a particularly special place to deserve such treatment - we were only there for a few hours as part of an uncomfortable tourist trip - although it was quite unlike anywhere I have been before or since. It was a memorable place, without the baggage of commitment: we saw it, experienced it, photographed it, paid, and moved on: I think it was salt pans and flamingoes next.
The place was Sandwich Harbour on the coast of Namibia to the south of Swakopmund, the time was October 2009; and I wish I could wind back the clock and walk that beach again.
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