The Smell of Hot Sand

It was a lovely day in Co. Waterford yesterday, until about 5pm when the grey clouds came in.

I went to Bunmahon, intending to swim but there was a mean breeze right off the sea which made me reconsider as I am a coward for all things cold.   

Instead I lay on the sand which was dry and hot and let the warmth soak into me and remembered how much I love the smell of hot sand.

Seaweed Baptism on Kilfarassy Strand

I did a seaweed foraging walk on Sunday on Kilfarassy Strand and it was brilliant.  I am a seaweed convert, on my way to becoming a seaweed addict.  Our guide was Marie Power who was fantastic, very friendly and informative.  She has a website called The Sea Gardner which is well worth a look if you are in any way interested in the subject - http://www.theseagardener.ie/

I nibbled on dilisk, pepper dulse, sea spaghetti and carrageen straight from the rock pools and brought home a little bag of kelp, sweet kelp, sea spaghetti, dilisk and sea lettuce.  I could have brought home a handful of serrated wrack for a seaweed bath but our water turns my hair green.  I still might risk it though for the joy of a seaweed bath.

I learned that 'slawcorn' (that's the phonetic version, don't ask me to spell the Irish word) is for hard core seaweed lovers only.  I learned that sea lettuce is very high in B12 and that sweet kelp can be made into crisps.  I dried my little batch today and crumbled some into a curry and ate some there and then and I still have some left over.  There are no poisonous seaweeds on our Irish shores, you just have to ensure the water quality is good where you collect it from so once this batch is finished I could be back to Kilfarassy for more.

As a bonus, Kilfarassy is a fantastic beach.  At low tide you can walk from one small beach to another, round headlands and over rocks.  There are rock islands all along  the coast and plenty of rock arches.  Needless to say, combing was carried out and my walking was rewarded by finding a lovely sea worn hurley, 2 intact spider crab shells and an old fashioned cork float.

 

 

 

Crab Carnage

It was crab carnage last week at Ballydowane.  There had been some stormy weather but nothing to account for the amount of whole crabs, legs, claws, and shells that I found all over Ballydowane.  I also saw my first whole Velvet Swimming Crab with their lovely, flattened back legs for swimming.  The colours were amazing, rosy pinks, vivid oranges, purple and electric blue.

Edible crab

Crab skeleton

Velvet Swimming Crab

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Catching up

Today is World Earth Day apparently and as I have been a little distracted of late and not posted anything for a while, I thought it was time to make amends with a few photos.  The good news for World Earth Day is that the beaches of Co. Waterford that I have been visiting on my usual rounds are really, really, clean.  I have to struggle to come up with goodies like this!

Bun and Bally in Monochrome

I went to Bunmahon on Sunday.  The beach was amazingly clean so I motored down the coast road for less than 5 minutes and went to Ballydowane instead.  Also very clean but one or two gems, including the skeleton of a pipefish.  I wanted to bring it home but it smelled
b a d.

For reasons unknown, even to myself, the photos in this post are all (mostly) in black and white.

Chris Jordan - Midway

Midway is a photographic project by Chris Jordan, featuring his work cataloguing dead baby albatrosses from the Midway atoll in the Pacific ocean.  As you can see in the photographs, the albatrosses choke to death on plastic rubbish from the ocean which is mistakenly fed to them as food by their parents.  It is truly shocking to see bottle tops, lighters and other rubbish in the stomachs of these birds.  Another reason to take every bit of plastic off our beaches.

You can check out more work and get more information this project on his website here http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24