Sunday 11 March 2012

The nature trail

When I was little I wanted to be a Blue Peter presenter, and would walk around the fields near my home pointing out the things of interest to my imaginary audience. Today's swim was a bit like that, except the Val Singleton figure was my friend Sue who has an encylopaedic knowledge of our marine flora and fauna. We were swimming from Broadsands to Elberry in Paignton, where there is a bed of rare eel grass, home to sea horses. You swim alongside the crinkly coastline with its strange rocks like sculptures created by hippies on acid. As well as the delicate eel grass we saw breadcrumb sponge, sea lettuce, dulse, a starfish and sea potatoes (yes, sea potatoes). The latter are a type of furry urchin; there were lots of their shells on the seabed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely blog Sophie. I'm very excited by the prospect of seahorses and sea potatoes!

Sophie said...

Thank you! Sea potato is a remarkably unromantic name for something that is actually rather pretty