Borth Beach BBQ
The sky was grey but there was a silver lining on the horizon, so at four in the afternoon we decided to go ahead – come rain or shine. We drove to town to buy raw king prawns and fresh baguettes then set about finalising the preparations for our 15th anniversary beach BBQ.
While I finished up in the kitchen (curry prawns; home-made BBQ relish; mushroom, shallot and cherry tomato skewers; herbed new potatoes on rosemary skewers; sweetcorn wheels with orange and cumin butter – we were expecting a veggie), John was dispatched to the beach to take care of the outside engineering. He loves this sort of thing, he can spend whole days building stone circles (he is a mathematician). Half an hour before the guests were due, he had constructed an impressive stonewall as a windshelter. A dining table and a cooking surface had been constructed from driftwood.
While the wind continued to buffet us, it was calm behind the stonewall so we soon sat cross-legged on the pebbles around the table. The sun projected a curtain of rays through the clouds on the horizon, forming a suitably impressive backdrop for the occassion. We passed around wine and olives and the first (and easily best) BBQ dish: locally caught fish that one of the guests had brought along. After that, the food and wine just kept coming.
I’m to the far left, John is at the far right and my sister is sticking her head out in front of the windshelter.
The clouds lifted briefly to reveal a red-gold sunset weeping into the ocean then they closed in and we were sprayed with a fine drizzle of rain. But it cleared up soon and it stayed light for good hour after sunset. The sea had turned greenish-grey in the soft blue dusk and gulls drifted against the lead-grey clouds above the hills in the distance – this had to be better than Bali.
We sat on the beach until long after dark, staring into the flames.
When we ran out of driftwood, we burned first the dinner table, then the kitchen.
Extreme BBQing? Not really. I remember beach parties in St. Andrews when the bonfire was carried away in the breeze and BBQs in Stirling on Guy Fawkes nights when it was actually below freezing. But the most memorable BBQ?
Probably. A fitting anniversary.
We stayed a while after darkness had crept in, burning first the kitchen and then the dining table.
Tags: Travels on my Doorstep, Tag Index
Denni