Best time to go beach combing
The best time to go beachcombing is after a storm. The choppy waters, rain and wind work interesting finds loose from the cliffs. You’ll find them deposited by the waves all across the beach if you look carefully.
It’s also best to look when the tide is going out, as the finds are typically easier to spot when they’re wet. Plus, you’ll be the first, so others won’t have nabbed the best finds before you arrive.
One of the chief delights of living on the whale coast is that there is always an excuse to go rambling along the seashore in search of driftwood.
To negotiate much of the tide line, one needs to be fairly agile. It is a matter of leaping from one slippery rock to another, of wallowing ankle-deep in sodden tangle, of wading through shell-strewn pools and sometimes climbing up steep barnacle-crusted rocks to skirt the incoming tide. To me, it is all sheer glory.
With the sharp, clean smell of sea filling my nostrils, the roaring breakers in my ears and the astringent caress of fine spray on my cheeks, I am content to wander for hours.
The dominant motive is always to gather driftwood, but it is difficult to resist the fascination of collecting a few limpets or periwinkles to smash and feed the waving tendrils of anemones in the colourful pools, or turning over a stone to watch the green shell-encrusted crabs scuttling to fresh hiding places.
My fertile imagination, fed by many a colourful bygone story , pictures dedicated beachcombers sometimes spending stormy nights in convenient caves so as to be the first to pounce on any trophy the sea might bestow- no doubt kept warm by the unflagging hope that it might be a cask of whiskey!
I can recall someone finding a sack of flour which he claimed be quite fir for use because the flour on the outside formed a paste which had kept the inside dry. Another found a box of candles which was very useful. A summer day is often bullied out of existence in a single night.
The morning following is bright and, as we know too well, treacherously calm. On days like these there are always plenty of driftwood and one begin by collecting every piece and making little piles along the shore to be collected on the return journey, but always, a little farther along, there are choosier pieces of driftwood than those already gathered and so one continues acquisitively until there are far too many piles to be carried home and one has to select the most desirable pieces and leave the rest, hoping it will be there another day.
My most treasured find to date is merely a piece of driftwood, part of a branch of a tree, but beautifully sculpted by nature into a classic representation of a female figure. Splendid days spent at my beloved seaside..
