Saturday arrived with a nasty twist in its tail. Hannah has Covid
She felt rotten but the sun was out. We do still take Covid seriously in this house and choose not to mingle with people. But a campervan to lurk in is a perfect plan . A bed on wheels that can be parked anywhere is a great solution.
Wembury was our destination of choice and by 4pm we were the only people about. A nearly monotone walk occurred.
Hiding out in a van with limited phone signal gave me the chance to read a whole print edition Saturday Newspaper. So complete is my reading that I can fully justify buying a Sunday one. Happiness gleaned from adversity.
Yesterday was one of those repetitive blogging days when I do a regular activity. About once every four or five weeks, our dogs go to the groomers in Wembury and I get three to four hours to do whatever I want. Unhindered by the needs of two dogs. Sometimes I get on with regular life admin but mostly I take myself to Wembury beach which offers a variety of me-shaped entertainments. A Coffee shop, an excellent swimming beach and the South West Coastal path in two directions. Yesterday was a little different as the weather was shocking and I had driven through a flood to get there. There was no phone signal and the rain was drenching. I had one essential task that could be performed in the local Post Office. Beyond that it was just book reading in the campervan with cups of tea from a thermos flask. Hardly the stuff of blogging gold. But the weather and tides had other plans for the day. The header photograph is not black and white but exactly as the coast presented itself on arrival. The wind was a warm, but strong, south westerly and an abnormally high tide was due at 5pm. In no time at all our little brown campervan had many friends in the car park. Campervan’s and regular vans bringing hoards of excited surfers to the beach. Maybe fifty vans being unpacked by rubber clad enthusiasts eager to make the best of the day on their boards. I watched from the comfort of the van and the hours passed, but soon enough the tea had worked its way to my bladder and I decided to walk to the public loo rather than use our onboard facilities. The power of the sea was amazing in a relatively small bay. The surfers or the weather had brought many onlookers who, just like me, stood on the cliffs and watched the spectacle of nature and the little black specs who were riding the waves. The sunset coincided with high-tide and nature threw out a light show to end the afternoon.
November blows in on a storm. Yesterday was dog grooming day. A very recent storm had damaged the road that would normally take me to Wembury beach after I dropped them off for a couple of hours of pampering. The weather was already pretty unpredictable so I had packed a raincoat, a large beach towel and a tin containing greetings cards. I was determined that my dog-free hours were going to be well spent. Weather and the tide, not fate was going to be the deciding factor on how I spent my morning. At the point that the beach access road was closed I took off, up steep valley lanes that were covered in slippery, damp fallen leaves. After two hair raising reversing events I found a car park at a place called Wembury Point.
As I arrived the heavens opened which negated any value my raincoat had, the beach towel was already useless as I was now very many metres up from sea level. The tin of greetings cards it would have to be. So here we have it, confession time.
I am dreadful at sending out Christmas cards in a timely fashion. I have made all the excuses in the world and often opt for the donating to charity option. None of that helps my guilt as the cards from more diligent people drop through our letterbox in December. This year I made a plan. I have bought Charity Christmas cards and some note cards. The note cards can be written at any time, no pressure no deadlines and no excuses. Inside I have popped a small Christmas card bearing the words ‘This may be your 1st Christmas card of 2023’
Creating a specific tin with everything that I need has transformed my task. If I know I am going to be hanging around doing nothing more than scrolling through my phone, I grab the tin and write notes to friends and family. Yesterday 12 cards were written and posted in the time it took for a storm to pass.
I even had one of those moments when a forgotten address just floated into my head when I wasn’t actually thinking about it.
With an hour or so left the rain had cleared enough for me to do a clifftop walk. The area where I was walking was formerly a naval establishment called H.M.S Cambridge. Only a small radar station remains and the land around is being gently returned to nature. The groundworkers making the transformation are not human.
Dartmoor ponies have been moved to Wembury point to gently graze the area back to a more natural state. When I set off on my walk they were all hard at it. But on my return a lunchtime rest had prevailed.
Not only ponies, when I returned to the car park two large refuse collecting lorries had parked up for their crews to enjoy a break with beautiful views. This was absolutely in my favour. As they started their engines to leave I decided to follow them down the narrow lanes. No awkward reversing stand-offs with oncoming drivers on slippery lanes. Nobody expected two refuse lorries to reverse and so, as a convoy of three, we returned to civilisation easily with other people backing up.
Two groomed dogs, 12 notes with cards written and a good walk. Time to get on with real life.
Here I am on my regular, dog grooming day, spot. Wembley Beach on a day with sunshine, the first day of good weather for weeks. To celebrate I bought an unusual but gorgeous snack to accompany my habitual cup of tea.
This product is an unctuous flavour bomb. I may start making them at home. It went down very well with a cup of tea.
The tide was out so rock pooling was the activity of choice. The trouble with rock pooling is that discovering creatures hidden under rocks is not the most photographic experience, as any right-minded sea creature quickly shuttles under a different rock very quickly. Sunbeams, however, can easily be trapped for photography.
Photography was on other peoples minds too, as a wedding party arrived to take some memorable images on this beautiful stretch of coast.
But first a more pressing problem, where could the bride and bridesmaids have a wee? The public toilets were a quagmire of sand and other detritus from a busy beach day.
Plans were made, there was a significant delay and then photographs were posed.
And finally a lovely long distance shot that looks like a figurative abstract.
Yesterday was a mix of plans coming together and plans falling apart. Up to 3pm things pretty much went to plan, two art projects were finished in enough time to get me to Wembury for dog grooming. I even managed to get the best parking spot above the beach .
After top grade parking the plan was to swim and read while the dogs were being pampered. Tide and weather slightly changed that plan. I hadn’t checked the tide and the clouds occluded the bright sunshine.I found myself a warm rock and basked on radiated heat while reading my book. Other beach goers provided unexpected entertainment if I allowed myself to drift away from my novel. The beach was full of teenagers away from school for the exam season. There was also a group of mothers planning an after school party. I was in awe of the amount of stuff they transported onto the beach, sadly most of it,very environmentally unsound. The tide was going out and making the beach huge. They relocated three times, each time having to move enough stuff for a mini festival. Time ticked away while I listened to teenage drama, George, Lauren and an anonymous girl were particularly good value. Eventually though, and after an unplanned snooze it was time to collect the dogs. The beach had reached peak business and the smell of barbeque was overwhelming.
Our evening plan had been to swim after collecting the dogs but we had failed to remember the seasonal ban. However a coastal path walk took us to a rocky bay not too far away.
We were the only people there and the water was warm. My swim was essential. During the unplanned snooze, or it may have been a deep sleep. I had managed to squirm off the warm rock and onto fine sand. The sand was everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Driving home to sort things out would have been an exercise in whole body exfoliation. Not an experimental beauty treatment I was prepared to trial.
While I sorted myself out, Hannah basked on non invasive rocks and the dogs had a whole new beach to explore, without sand ruining their newly primped good looks.
A fresh and brief lunchtime blog. Knowing that I was delivering the dogs for a lunchtime pampering session at Wembury I planned for their second walk of the day to be at low tide on the beach.
So much messy fun to be had with a huge area of beach to scamper on and hunt for seaweed.
But even better fun to be had when an impressionable young pup could be chased at high speed.
Nobody needs to see the inside of my car once I could persuade them to leave the beach. I will have to clean it before I pick them up as pristine pooches in a few hours time.
This weeks, unintentional, low tide theme is proving to be fun.
My Dad was an eternal optomist. I neve knew his glass to be anything less than half full. Not that his life was always easy, but he could always find a way around difficulties or find something to be grateful for. One of his favourite moments in life was when he could declare something positive out of mediocrity or worse. Yesterday he would have declared that we had all got the best out of the day.
We took a late trip out to the beach when the tide was out. For the most part it had been a grey day but as we started the descent to the coast the sun appeared from a crack over the horizon. Giving us our first ever sighting of the Eddystone Lighthouse.
Set on a perilous outcrop 12 miles offshore it protects seafarers from harm on a notorious spot for shipwrecks. The weather conditions have never been right for us to see it on our regular visits to this beach. So without anything else we had added value to our day. But the sun prevailed.
When the cafe had an Internet fail there could have been grumpy faces but some hidden cash bought everyone a late afternoon snack, to fuel our afternoon wanderings in the unexpected sunshine.
My Dad would have said ” I think we have had the best of the day” It was his great grand daughters first time on a beach. She was a lucky girl to have such a perfect moment.
The sun was up yesterday and I was in Wembury. My feet must have sensed this and were reluctant to wear socks. It was a dog grooming day so I had the beach to myself while the fluffs were being pampered. The last time I was here was in the midst of a really cold snap of weather, the overnight frost had stayed well past noon. Socks were definitely needed. Yesterday walking the coastal path was a bit unpleasant with cold toes but wandering bare foot on the beach was not so bad at all.
Usually, at Wembury, there is a splendid cafe almost on the beach but January is the time small businesses take a break. There was nowhere to warm up, once my toes had decided that being liberated from shoes and socks, and paddling in a river and the sea was not the smartest move in the long term.
The actual plan for the morning was to finish my book club book which required all my concentration just to keep a grip on the characters. With my feet wrapped in a blanket I stepped into the warm but hazardous world of Cyprus in 1974.
With my reading mission accomplished, I collected two clean and fragrant dogs from the groomers and returned to the real world of January life. I am not a fan of January. Like the back end of the beach, it is strewn with unremarkable stuff that probably needs clearing up.
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.
November surprised us yesterday. Our plans involved fairly heavy rain, a constant state of being damp and a mug of soup as a reward for battling inclement weather.
There was no battle.
For more than two hours blue skies chased away the greige of the previous week. The tide at Wembury was low enough to fill those hours with rock-pooling adventures.
But first a little bit of serendipity, the foreground in the top picture of the blog shows seaweed copying a geographical feature.
We had taken wellies to walk the muddy coastal path but they got use taking us into the deeper rock pools.
Unfortunately, we both suffer from very muscular calf syndrome. ( some might call them plump) So we only wear short wellies, short wellies are no match for a rapidly incoming tide so we needed to be quite nimble to avoid wet feet. Hugo and Lola had no such problems and bravely waded into rock pools up to their chests in water. Lola was rewarded for enthusiasm, on her return to dry land, by a swift right hook from Hugo.
Balance prevented any watery rock pool pictures but the dry bits had captured some wonderful sea detritus from the previous weeks stormy weather.
Then the tide came in and with it the weather.
Turning our rock pool world into a playground for much braver souls.
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