After lockdown in Brooklyn, a trip to the seaside was just what I needed

Being locked within these four walls in Brooklyn made me pine for the sea of my childhood, but with no chance of getting to the beach I began to give up hope. Then, one day, the sea came to me, writes Holly Baxter

The beach on the Long Island Sound on Tod’s Point in Old Greenwich, Connecticut (AFP via Getty)

You learn a lot about yourself during a pandemic. Some people learn that they’re not compatible with their partner any more; others learn that they want to spend the rest of their lives with them, as all those pandemic engagements you see on Instagram can attest. Some people learn that they cope well under pressure and are highly resilient; others learn that the stress of their job isn’t worth it and decide to go back to college or switch gears. Some people learn that they cope badly when they’re not surrounded by people; others learn that they don’t function well in a small apartment in a big city, and could actually quite happily live in a leafy town.

Me? I learnt that I love water.

It sounds like a ridiculously small thing, but it’s something that feels more urgent with each day of isolation. Technically, New York has just entered phase four of its reopening plan – which means that up to 50 people can gather outdoors, and zoos and botanical gardens are now open for reduced numbers of visitors (don’t all rush to the spider house at once!). Phase four was once supposed to include indoor dining and activities, but the governor has suspended that for now. Although coronavirus cases remain low in this state, they’re skyrocketing elsewhere in the US.

Once you add in the beach chairs, a couple of towels and the compulsory bag of soggy sandwiches, the trip started to look… well, not exactly worth it

I love New York City, and one of the reasons I love it is because it’s close to water. I grew up in Newcastle, which people don’t think of as a seaside town but which essentially is – the Metro goes down to the coast in 20 minutes, the Whitley Bay slot machines are a key part of every Geordie childhood, and each summer my school would take us all down to Cullercoats and encourage us to swim in the freezing North Sea during a 15C “heatwave”. I was taught to swim as a baby and taken to the beach at least twice a month throughout my childhood. It’s left me with a lifelong craving to be near water, whether that’s the blustery coast of Cornwall in November or the soft sands of Turks and Caicos in May.

During the pandemic, I’ve taken time to walk down to the East River (which, confusingly, is actually the sea) on a number of occasions. It’s a 40-minute straight walk from my house, and the salty air resets something within me when I’m feeling down. Medical studies have shown that sea air boosts serotonin in the brain, so I choose to believe I really am giving myself a little neurological kick every time I do it.

There’s nothing like being at the beach, though, and that’s what I really want now temperatures are soaring above 35C in Brooklyn. I want it so much, in fact, that I even wrote up a plan to get to Rockaway Beach in Queens without using the subway a couple of days ago and very nearly convinced my fiance we should enact it. It started out with a two-hour walk, followed by an hour-long boat ride, and culminated in a 20-minute stroll on the other side. Once you add in the beach chairs, a couple of towels and the compulsory bag of soggy sandwiches, the trip started to look... well, not exactly worth it. I resigned myself to being beach-free this year and went back to fantasising about our long-delayed honeymoon (now in 2021) which will, if it comes to pass, feature a blissful week on the sand in Thailand.

Then, all of a sudden, another option fell out of the sky. A friend has a beach house in Connecticut, which is a two-hour train ride away. It was hired for her and her parents last year, but now her parents can’t fly in and a room is going spare. The friend – who is part of my four-person social distancing bubble – has invited us down for a weekend. I’ve started looking wistfully at the seaside town on Google Maps: it’s a tiny residential place with white sand and a beautiful bay. The train tickets are $21 (£16.50), and I’m about as excited about seeing that beach in Connecticut for a weekend rather than the four walls of our small one-room Brooklyn apartment as I was when my fiance asked me to marry him.

It seems I gave up on the sea, so the sea came to me.