“You don’t get many days like this in Janurary!” Kevin Mullen, 27, called out Saturday as he jogged along Duxbury Beach. Mullen, a Duxbury resident, was training with Emily Strauss, 25, for upcoming marathons in Washington and New York.
With temperatures in the high 40s, sunshine and light winds, dozens of others on the beach were echoing that sentiment.
“This is July! I mean January! Most people are shoveling snow in a normal year,” Fred Sweeney, 63, of Middleboro said with a trace of disbelief as he finished up three hours of clamming at low tide.
He took home half a basket of clams and half a basket of quahogs. Sweeney has been clamming and fishing at Duxbury since his teens.
Barbara Burnham of Hopkinton raised her head towards the sky and smiled. “The sun on your face is amazing . . . and the air and the waves and the sound of the sea,” she said. “It is just good to be out in the light”
“It definitely nice to see the sun and not nearly as cold as last weekend,” agreed Andy Wiemeyer of Duxbury. He was walking slowly behind his two-and-a-half-year-old son, Drew, who was resolutely pushing a truck with rock in the back along tracks left by a real truck.
“He will walk forever on a beach. Keep going . . . .” Wiemeyer called out. His wife, Kim, was with their daughters Katy and Sara a shor distance behind.
Paula Shakespeare of Natick, walking with Burnham, comes to the beach often. Her father owns a home in Duxbury. “It’s just a beautiful walking beach, flat, at low tide, it’s phenomenal.”
The most purposeful walketrs might have been a group of 15 members of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Judy Praznik of Weymouth led the four-hour hike out to Gurnet Light and back for the AMC’s Boston Chapter Local Walks Committee. They did eight miles in hour-hours, including a half-hour stop at Gurnet Point for lunch.
The annual winter beach walk, a favorite of the club, was started by Quincy resident Ann Landers years ago, but when she broke her ankle this year, she enlisted Praznik to fill in.
“This walk was so highly recommended by others that I had to try it,” said Sissy Clark of Brookline, a physician at Boston University Medical Center. “They said it was just gorgeous, and that you managed to get nice days whenever it happened.”
Others came from even longer distances. Steve Presley drove from Action and Ellen Wentland made the 90-minute trip from Groveland.
“I thought it would just be a new great experience,” Wentland said.
“In winter you see the beach in a different way. It is just lovely and the water looks different. It is great to be out and it’s exercise.
Sue Scheible may be reached at sscheible@ledger.com.
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