by
bloglikesit
@ 26/08/2007 - 19:31:59
Any pics on here can be seen bigger and better on my Flickr page if you're at all interested.
So, my brother and his girlfriend are down for a visit this weekend, and yesterday we decided to go to the beach. Paddy opted out due to his leg being in a cast - very wise, can you imagine getting sand in that!? - and so stayed at home with the doggies. We piled into my car and off we went!
When we used to visit my grandparents, we always used to go to a place called Pendine, on the Pembrokeshire coast. That's where we decided to go. It's a long flat stretch of clean sand, where they used to do the land speed record attempts. It's really beautiful. At one end of the beach are cliffs with caves and rock pools beneath them. That's where we always set up camp, it's more interesting, there's a bit of shade if you need it, and there's a path up to the cliff top.
You used to be able to drive onto the beach, but they stopped that a few years ago citing safety reasons. In all the years we spent summers there, I don't remember anyone being hurt by a car on that beach. Oh well.
Anyway, there was a bit of traffic as we came into Carmarthen, which added a bit of time to the journey, but we had the stero on and it seemed to go quite quickly.
This is where we ended up!
That's our stuff in the middle, the two empty chairs. Considering how big the beach is, and how nice a day it was, it was almost empty!
Elliot and Liz went down to the sea, and I stayed to look after our things, with my book. I took this shot while they were walking away, cos Liz hates having her picture taken.
It was an absolutely beautiful day, so sunny and warm. We had some sandwiches I'd made, and a drink, and I read my book in the sun while Elliot and Liz explored the rock pools. Then I noticed that I could no longer see the Gower peninsula on the horizon...
It was a bank of mist, almost like a wall! It came closer and closer, first enveloping the beach to the left of us, and then the cliffs to the right.
We had loads of fun running around in the mist, and took loads of pics of each other in the distance, all faint and spooky!
It was like something from "Silent Hill"! Really eerie. The mist muffled all the sound. There was a kid walking round banging two rocks together, and it echoed off the cliffs - but we couldn't see him. Very strange.
Even thought it was misty, the sun was still quite strong overhead, and it was still warm.
Elliot likes to play in the sand (well, who doesn't?) and he always makes sand sculptures, like this one:
But we decided to go a bit further. This involved lots of digging:
And this was the end result!
The hole was so deep it reached the water table under the sand, and we had a puddle in the bottom that got deeper as the tide came in - which completely flumoxed one little girl who was sat near us, because the water kept draining away in her little hole in the sand when she poured it in. I tried to explain it, but I don't think she really understood...
So we hung around until the tide came in:
And then went home. Or rather, tried to go home.
You see, at Pendine, the cliffs form a sort of little cove, with one end sticking out onto the beach. Which means, when the tide comes in, the area in front of the cliffs is cut off from the rest of the beach when the sea reaches the point.
The rest of the beach is the other side of that rocky bit. We were ok to paddle round, but there were people behind us who were not even getting ready to leave!
So that was our day at the beach. We drove home, had a barbeque, drank beer and wine, played on the Wii and went to bed knackered and sunburnt.
