Ballydowane On A Sunny Day

Today was one of those days when you know Spring isn't that far away, when there is real heat in the sun and the beach is suddenly filled with people who walk on, get out their phones make videos or take sweeping panoramic shots and then walk back to their cars.

My bucket and I took our time - there wasn't a lot to collect - but there were faces, fish, a yellow cactus and a chair leg, pea pods and an arrow pointing back the way it had come.

Ball, Dumbo, Jug

Sunday Afternoon Beach Combing

It was bitterly cold this weekend - rainy, dull, windy and generally just miserable on Sunday as I headed to the beach.  I had the place almost to myself and did a good clean-up, mainly of polystyrene which is evil stuff and breaks down into tiny particles which I'm sure must look very much like food to fish and other sea creatures.  I found some lovely pieces of driftwood, a rusty bit of lobster pot and these - I am especially fond of the computer cables and attached tiny piece of circuit board.

 

A spotted ray eggcase

Brought To You By The Letter 'n'

Yesterday I cleaned Ballydowane and removed enough plastic drink bottles to fill a whole bin.  The tide was 3 hours away from high but even so the waves were so high that lower end of the beach where I was, was rapidly becoming cut off from the exit.  So I skidaddled and hopped over the hill to Bunmahon which even at high tide can be walked along it's edge with the dunes.  Nothing of any note to report but these few items caught my photographic attention.

Gales and Storms

As I write this, a gale is raging outside.  I don't know if it is the tail end of Doris and or new one - maybe Edna or Elizabeth or Eileen.  Whatever the name it is music to my beach combing ears since last week, after Doris, I ventured forth in two days of epic beach combing which gave me the following finds. 

Ballydowane has been almost devoid of flotsam for weeks but when I got there last Friday it was visible in a line across the beach.  Shingle that had been removed was returned in different places and all the usual locations of flotsam were empty whilst in places where usually nothing washes in were cartons, balloons and a host of other plastic paraphernalia that has the unlikely effect of making my blood course excitedly through my veins.  An hour later, walking back down the beach loaded up with oil barrels and milk cartons, I was still excited and looked like a happy, pink-cheeked beach tramp.

The next day I went to Clonea via Ballyvoile.  The 'back beach', as I call it, at Clonea is quite inaccessible but gets the best treasures.  Again no disappointment but by the end dismay at the sheer amount of things washed in.  Almost all human garbage is there.  By far the most numerous were lids and shotgun wads.  There were 4 dead seals in total also, all missing their heads.