The Atlantic is a smell before it is an ocean... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Smell of the Atlantic by Alexander McMaster above.
"The Atlantic has a particular smell.
It drifted over the last hill, the first familiar scent in months apart from the daily reek of coffee. I breathed it in, salt air, and then here it was, spread out glistening below. The final moments of sunset vanished over its brink, the sea which bounds the world.
For over half a year I had crossed the African continent on a bicycle, thousands of miles along the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean; across the Maasai Steppe and along the Okavango Delta; over the Sahara and Kalahari deserts. And here it was, at the edge of Namibia, greeting me, an old friend – The Atlantic..."
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
