Tag: Beach Days

#878 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity1 Comment

Another morning and another empty beach. Lola’s tolerance, was about 10 minutes, Hugo’s infinite.

I’m with Hugo on this one. Sunshine + beach+book, me, or + seaweed, him, is too good an opportunity to miss. Lola didn’t even bother with a swim today.

But blue skies, that is quite the game-changer. Now here is a blog that changes direction. Unexpectedly a second beach 30 minutes away appeared on the daily schedule.

A beach visit with two of their favourite people.

A beach where Lola is fully engaged for over an hour!

And enough rust to keep me happy.

#419 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Advent+2022Leave a comment

There are bonuses to being up early to take the van for a repair. Firstly this gorgeous frosted leaf and secondly an empty beach for the dogs to scamper on.

They were full of fizzing joy when they discovered they had a whole beach with no canine competition and all the humans intent on catching waves.

Even the frost got in on the making waves on some driftwood.

The winter waves have bought massive tree trunks onto Wembury Beach. Almost whole trees were just tossed onto the ground at the high tide line like the tiniest of sticks.

Winter mornings don’t get much better than this.

#108 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn ConcatenationLeave a comment

There is nothing more exciting for our dogs than a beach that is slightly damp and yielding to the paws. A beach where they can build up speed and go a little crazy without human intervention. January is the perfect month for such adventures. This picture was taken at the very end of a long walk, the dog footprints are there just for the joy. The human footprints have determination and purpose. The human footprints are heading towards coffee and cake in a favourite cafe.

The cafe was closed for refurbishments. The dogs continued with joy and the humans made compromises. Ultimately everyone was happy.

Which is more than can be said for any lobster who casually wanders into a lobster pot looking for a snack.

#39 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Beach LifeLeave a comment

This past weekend was the culmination of two and a half months of Covid Cultural Catch Up. From September through to mid November we’ve done a curious mix of things that have been postponed and rebooked during the periods of lockdown and other sociatal restrictions. We should have been in Studland Bay in November 2020. Things have been rescheduled quite randomly but serendipity made our rebooked visit to Studland more interesting because on this occasion we could hook up with family members not seen for years. An unexpected treat.

I am always a sucker for a row of beach huts. The ones above at Knoll Beach were not really very photogenic, neither so pristine that they were perfect or so decrepit that they were wistfully vintage. Awkwardly they were just a bit shambolic, Fixed up with a variety of measures to help them withstand the storms of winter. Not being a proper photographer is wonderfully freeing. To get this image I have shamelessly ramped up the saturations and then selectively desaturated anything that wasn’t a warm yellow/orange. Giving this row of beachside huts a uniformity they dont really have.

All this is really a preamble before I admit that I didn’t research the area of Studland Bay or Swanage at all before we arrived there on Saturday. Not my normal behaviour at all. So we arrived with no plans beyond having some good beach walks and to eat fish wherever possible. I know that in an area of such outstanding natural beauty and fascinating history my lack of pre-visit research is a heinous crime, but sometimes a beach( and some fish) is all you need!

Oh the beach is so seductive, sand like soft brown sugar and so many shells and rocks to look at.

In reality we never strayed far from the beach. Driftwood here is bleached and white, not something we normally see on our local Devon or Cornwall coast.

White leaves also stand out on the autumn leaf-fall on the edges of the beach.

A global direction board on the beach reminded us of how far away some of our loved ones are.

Thankfully there was always coffee and baked goods to raise the spirits and recharge our beach walking legs…

Pandemic Pondering #124

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Cornwall2 Comments

When I woke up this morning I had an idea that I knew which way the blog would go today. We were planning to travel north roughly in line with the course of the River Tamar. It has been a wonderful day both weather wise and experience wise , and that will inform later blogs but today was actually completely hijacked by a geological sentence.

Breccicated Beds derived from Downslope slumping.

We took the dogs for a walk on Widemouth Beach near Bude in North Cornwall. In summer, dogs are only allowed on the southern end of the beach, known as BlackRock Beach. The foreshore is marked by black rocks that run into the sea which obviously give the beach its name.

It was the cliffs at the back of the beach that stole the show today. That, and a truly delicious first sea swim for the season.

I’m a bit lost for words with the beauty of these cliffs

I hope these photographs show why the blog had been dominated by rock formations and that delightful sentence from the geological description.

I love these rocks because they look like food, a toasted muffin or folds of meringue for a celebratory pavlova. They also have a feeling of Modernist sculpture. Parts of them also look like rust, one of my favourite textures..

I also found some actual rust. An aged nail standing firm on a sea and sun bleached timber.

Downslope slumping, beautiful stuff.