The Beach

I have a constantly evolving list of places I want to travel to; as things stand, many countries in Africa head the shortlist, some undiscovered corners of both eastern and western Europe follow closely behind, and then you can count numerous random places around the rest of this beautiful world of ours jockeying for position on my globetrotting calendar, but probably having to wait more patiently for their turn than if I was, say, decadently minted and able to drop my responsibilities and don the shorts and flip-flops of eternal freedom tomorrow.

Alas, I can't, just now (bugger). But I'm working on it ;-)

Sometimes though, places get unexpectedly elevated up the wish-list, often simply because they offer something a bit quirky. Today, for example, I was thinking that I hadn't viewed some of the stunning photos on this site recently, but then I had the brainwave of seeing what I could find by visiting THIS site to maybe help me bring some of my favourite ever stunning images to life, of St Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles, where holidaymakers are terrorised/treated (depending on your particular viewpoint) to the spectacle of hulking great passenger airliners swooping shit-poopingly low over the golden sands of Maho Beach, which sits right at the end of the island's airport runway.

Looks cool to me, and seems like a perfectly reasonable excuse (in my book) to visit the Caribbean someday (yeah, like I needed one - when do England next play the West Indies?!)

Surely, this is one of the world's most unique beaches...it's either be thrilled, and/or be deaf as a post for the rest of your life...







What I love about this next piece of footage, other than the sheer power of the thrust from the engines of the Boeing 747 that is making waves (literally), is the fact that I've no idea whether the people on the beach are taking advantage of the artificial "surf" like any committed board-head perhaps would, or simply being blown into the sea involuntarily (I hope it's the latter, if I'm honest ;-):