Texture x 10

All from one half hour's mooch on the back beach at Clonea.

Such A Perfect Day

Days spent on Ballydowane under cloudless skies are now known as Perfect Days.  They are few but all the more precious for it.  How many are left this year I wonder? 

The beach was about the busiest I've ever seen it and there were people swimming, kids jumping the waves and sea kayakers paddling slowly in and out of the bay.  I drew and sunbathed and beach combed, leaving behind a present of 2 pieces of driftwood, a velvet swimming crab claw and and a coloured driftwood heart.  I baptised myself in the cold, but not unbearable water - Ballydowane and I are now properly acquainted.

OoO

Through A Hole

On a fine day last week, I went shopping via the scenic route.  It was a very low tide and at Kilmurrin Cove, I saw this

 

Without really thinking about it, I mooched my way over and climbed through to find a sun-drenched cove 

 

with lots of flotsam and jetsam

(I think these might have been left behind, rather than washed in)

Deer Skull

Well not really, but uncannily like one.  I brought it home and because it was a bit smelly, I have left it outside to deoderize in the gales and rains of our current August weather.  I suppose the seaweed will shrivel up and dry out but I'm hoping the 'antlers' will remain and eventually it could go up on the wall.  It freaks my fella out. 

Oil and Cardboard

It has been stormy here of late and on Ballydowane, the tides washed in lots of flat pack boxes at one side of the beach and one barrel of emulsified oil, minus the barrel, at the other side of the beach.  So I picked up all the boxes I could get to, although I think there will be more washing in over the next few days, and then emailed the council about the oil.  The oil lump had broken up slightly on its way in and smaller pieces were visible in the particle wash up on the tideline.

The Photographers of Ballydowane

The beach at Ballydowane was infested with photographers last night.  Well there were 3 on there anyway with their cameras and tripods pointed at the sea, shutter release cables in hand, probably taking long exposures of the tide going in and out and in and out and in and out ... making the tide look more like smoke rather than water (or smoke on the water but that's something else altogether).  I did the long exposure thing at a waterfall years ago when I first got my SLR and I was very tickled with the results but even so there's only so much water as smoke that even a Romantic like me can bear.  This seems to be the pattern for the photographers of Ballydowane - smokey tide and sea views.

Which left me, in the thin fog off the sea, to wander the tide lines, with my blind dog Boo, one eye on flotsam and one eye on Boo, who walks into rocks unless you shout Boobooboobooboobooboo like a parking sensor to warn him he's getting close to bumping his nose on something.  I'm sure the photographers appreciated that distraction as they watched over their 30 second shutter speeds.  There wasn't much rubbish I'm pleased and disappointed to say since I like and dislike it in equal measure.  The bright colours give you something to move towards.  Instead there was plenty of seaweed and bird's feathers and a little ball of pale turquoise fishing line with tiny white shells stuck on it.  And Boo only bumped his head once.