Squirts, sponges and stuff

Having been stuck in the grime of London all weekend, it seemed appropriate to swim at London Bridge - in Torquay. This amazing arch is always alluring, but today turned out to be particularly extraordinary. We swam at low water, and it was a very low tide indeed because we're on Spring tides at the moment. There is a cave by the arch, which today was revealed from underneath the arch itself; before, when I've gone at high water, you can only get to the cave around the lump of rock at the back. As we swam in we could see two sources of light: two entrances, with beautiful clear turquoise water lapping between. I then noticed bright white squashy things everywhere; they looked a bit like teeth, or as Anna more poetically put it, like candle wax dripping from the cave walls. Under the water though, they opened out like anenomes. I have now - thanks to a brilliant Torbay dive site - discovered they are called dead men's fingers. We also saw some rather necrotic looking sea sponges - brown masses stuck on the rock faces, occasionally spitting water at us. All this magical marine wildlife is, I think, normally hidden from swimmers, as we don't go down deep enough. Today, thanks to the spring tides, we were allowed a privileged look into their secret world. Watch the video....