My close friend has had her grandson staying this week, and I was lucky enough that she asked me if I could entertain him for an afternoon while she was with her group conversing in French. Obviously I was delighted since he’s an interesting young man and always great company.
It was a warm afternoon but I reckoned it wasn’t too warm for a walk so we headed out for the beach which is less than half a mile away. As he lives in London he was very interested in the different houses we passed, and particularly intrigued by a giant monkey puzzle tree we passed – although we both were disappointed that the monkeys seemed to be absent. We stopped by the golf course and watched some people playing and then another hundred yards and there was the beach. His granny lives not far from the seafront, further along the beach so he was interested to realise where he was – looking north he could see the Grand Pier from a different angle.
The tide was out – and when it’s out in Weston-super-Mare it is out a very very long way. We have the second highest tidal range in the world, after the Bay of Fundy in Canada. We walked along the beach towards where the River Axe runs into the sea, then followed the path round so we ended up walking back to the village beside one of the tiny tributaries, or pills. We had found some amazing things on the beach, dragon bones, pterodactyl feathers (who knew they had feathers? Fortunately my young adventurer recognised them) black jewels, plus various desiccated fishy and seagull remains. We also found shells and stones and once we left the beach and walked through the water meadow we saw baby dragons (which were surprisingly like butterflies.)
We descended onto the road and walked back, past the boatyard to The Boathouse, a café/restaurant/ice-cream parlour and treated ourselves to drinks and cake. Our adventures hadn’t ended. The young explorer wanted to walk past where yachts and cruisers are “parked” so we walked round, on the other side of the river from where we had just been. There were more baby dragons of all colours and when we got back onto the cycle path we saw plenty of blackberries but they were too high up for us to reach. We read some notices about where there had been a gunpowder store for the quarrying, and about the sheep which sometimes graze on the hill, and then we walked back past the café to the road.
We headed back to my house, this time walking along by the rhyne (drainage channel) past the Dolphin, spotted some dragon eggs actually on the rhyne (they looked like duckweed to me, but what do I know!) and then headed down the little cul-de-sac leading to the cut-through which took us to our house. We had just stepped inside when Granny arrived! Perfect timing! The young explorer was whisked away and I made myself a cup of tea. A lovely afternoon, and my reward was to find I’d walked just over 4 miles!
Lois Elsden 