A new activity for the challenge. Beach combing! We find a lot of broken trees and develop a side interest in fossils. Returning in March we get obsessed with driftwood and make Makka Pakka towers.
333 – Beach combing in winter with kids
Sunday 2 February, Cloudy. 8°C
My mum came up with this one and I’m wondering why on earth we’ve never done it before. She remembered her dad doing it on rare summer holidays in her childhood. B is keen at the idea. I’m delighted to have an idea to do at low tide. I’m low on those and the tides by us are pretty extreme so we get long hours of mud flats to negotiate.
I’m wary arriving at the beach. I’m trying frantically to remember if I’ve seen much washed up before which is going to satisfy B’s quest for treasure. We’re on the Bristol channel and I suspect we get less than more open coasts. I needn’t have worried. We find huge bits of broken off tree and lots of seaweed scattering the whole beach. Clearly the recent storms have brought a lot in.
B is off straight away. I find the sole of a shoe (minus the rest) and another smaller one right next to it. She finds what looks like half a surf board. We skirt the things that look more like rubbish (we’ve not brought the grabber and are picking things up and examining). Big pieces of plastic and a broken wooden pallet are explored. Then B find a massive metal sheet that seems to have been blown all the way up the beach. Tree trunks and concrete slabs (probably permanent residents) are found too.
B starts a sideline of trying to find fossils. We’re rubbish with this. We live on what I know is a great fossil beach but wouldn’t recognise one if it bit us on the nose. I’m going to fix this this year. I’m planning to ask my cousin for a tutorial when we see him at Easter. In the meantime I’m relying on B’s ‘expertise’.
B: It’s easy. You find a stone that looks like it might have a fossil in it and throw it down hard to break it open. Then you see if there’s one inside…
No idea if there is any accuracy to this but it’s fun… if potentially dangerous. I find a rock with a fabulous layer of what looks like crystal through and it cracks into 4, revealing more sparkle, to both our satisfaction. We try others but without better results.
Then we get cold. My hands are freezing. B needs the loo. We need to make our 333 for the day though. I was going to try and do it out of anything we’d ‘combed’ but the massive piles of seaweed are too good to miss.
Looking forward to repeating this challenge in some other locations over the course of the year. It’s definitely got lots of potential!
Chalking the plant shadows (332) >
< Bird Challenge week (339-336, 334)
285 – Making things out of driftwood and stones on the beach
Saturday 22 March. Cloudy. 12°C
It’s mid March and we’re back on the beach again. Someone has been making amazing stone sculptures and B and I want to have a go too. I suspect that we won’t reach artistic heights but it looks so much fun. The abandoned artwork includes a log with triangular stones along it’s back that looks just like a crocodile. We head to the beach with the aim of seeing if we can make that sort of thing too.
As is always the way though we’re immediately distracted. B is finding beautiful stones with lovely patterns on. I’m attracted to the huge piles of driftwood and seaweed and want to see if I can move them. I have a go and find I can…some are too heavy but I start attaching them to the concrete wall that goes down the beach. After a while I find I can sit on them. I invite B to have a go but she’s making towers of stones on them instead. Then she works out she can twist the wood and make them all fall over.
B then wants to play with the wood and she tries to set up a noughts and crosses board. She only gets 6 squares before we run out but then we start making things in the squares. We look for flat stones and see how high a ‘Makka Pakka’ tower we can make. B gets to 14… but the best bit is knocking them over at the end.
We have a really good time and also get lots of exercise pulling the bits of wood about. As predicted, we fail to reach artistic heights but we have a lot of fun messing about. I’d never realised how much potential driftwood gives you as a play activity. I suspect the council clears it away before the summer gets going but I think we scraped the surface of it’s potential.
< 286 – Making a pine cone bird feeder (again) & 284 – Making Daisy Chains >
