le weekend

As we all know, rain seems to be the norm in the UK when there is a bank holiday in the offing.
At the very last minute, a will we? won't we? kind of decision (largely dependant upon the weather) led to a camping trip on the south coast, as the weather looked like is was going to hold.
In a bit of a weird kick back to girl guides, I actually enjoy camping. Well, my kind of camping, which involves a carpet in my tent (I'm not kidding - you can buy tent carpets), and a handful of other home comforts (like a camping loo) which make the experience a whole lot more pleasant.
The night time temperature was about 10 degrees - a bit chilly honestly but bearable with a sleeping bag and a trusty crochet blanket to keep us warm.
We managed to eek out a couple more beach days - something I am really favouring a lot at the moment. The landscape and colour palettes are so different with each beach. The ones we visited this time were mainly stone, which made for a couple of impressive fossil finds - an almost complete sea anemone fossil and part of another sea creature - although I'm not sure what it is exactly.

I wonder, with the onset of autumn, how many more days this year will be beach days?

for my sister

back to it

I'm back from my short break on the Isle of Wight. The weather was kind to us and we had sun every day, despite the forecast saying we should have showers for a couple of days.
 The Isle of Wight is famed for dinosaur fossil finds, so we hunted for dinosaur fossils at the beaches we went to. We found fossilised sea sponges, oyster beds, wood, and other sea creatures which were approx. 90 million years old (I know!). We also visited the dinosaur farm museum - which is literally a load of fossils in a couple of barns, and held a cross section of a fossilised Dinosaur poo which was approx. 120 million years old - you could see the plants that it had been eating. It's fascinating, but hard to imagine that you have connected with something 120 million years old.
I collected a couple of pretty pebbles/stones from the beaches we visited - this is becoming something of a ritual every time I go to a new beach. I have them from various beaches across the UK (which would confuse an archaeologist in years to come I'm sure)

This seaweed was found on one of the beaches we visited - all the different colours and varieties were found within a couple of metres

We found a small beach (called Colwell bay) with the clearest waters - and as we wondered around in the shallows, little fish swam past our feet and crabs scuttled off to hide on rocks and in seaweed clusters. Ahh, a lovely time was had.
We didn't stay here - but I wish we had - maybe next time...