Beach Walk in the Morning, Lobster in the Afternoon

I’M NOT OFFICIALLY on vacation, but it sure feels like it. Memorial Day in the Hamptons found my daughter and me taking a fitness/ photography/ bird-watching walk in Springs, down the length of a peninsula with no name (not on my Hagstrom’s anyway). It’s a skinny spit of land that arcs out into Gardiner’s Bay, enclosing Accabonac Harbor, once a shellfishing mecca, now a sanctuary for least terns and piping plovers, of which we saw many.

We parked on Old Fireplace Road and followed it as it becomes Gerard Drive, changing from flatlands with water views in all directions to a green, enclosed country lane with pink weigela and beauty bush in flower, and then to open, sandy terrain with enviable beach houses, some on stilts.

That’s tree-covered, uninhabited Wood Tick Island on the right, below.

On Springs Fireplace Road, we spotted this restoration project, below — it’s an 18th century house with original wood floors and wainscotting intact. It’s a project of Rossetti Perchik, a local architect whose practice includes many historic houses.

Later we hit the road — the dreaded Montauk Highway (I have developed a morbid fear of traffic on Route 27) — but it wasn’t bad heading east toward Montauk.

We checked out Ditch Plains, the prime local surfing spot…

and ate a traditional lobster lunch at Gosman’s. I hadn’t been there in over 20 years and was told it had become a ‘factory,’ but we sat out on the dockfront terrace and thoroughly enjoyed our lobsters and Long Island chardonnay.