Westward Ho! Storm Damage - Beach Exploring

 

We have just come back from a 1/2 term trip to visit my Mum in North Devon. We arrived on Sunday and it was such a lovely day we had a quick lunch & headed straight out for a walk on the beach. Westward Ho! was always our favourite beach when I was a child, I remember many happy days building sand castles, body boarding & rock pooling . Both my Dad & Gran worked on a holiday camp their as well. We last visited North Devon back in August when Mum & I took the boys rock pooling. I can't believe how much difference 6 months makes to a beach. I know we have had some of the worst storms in years but neither mum or I have ever seen Westward Ho! beach like this!

Rock Pooling In Devon

The boys are really lucky that their Nanny (my mum) lives down in North Davon. We don't get down to visit as often as we'd like and nearly always end up with bad weather! So while we were down visiting last week the forecast wasn't amazing (but it turned out nice grrrr!) so rather than a day on the beach we decided to take the nets down to the rock pools at Westward Ho! I used to love going with my mum & nan as a child, we even used to cook the prawns we caught! I could never do that now! The nets we use live at my mums house with a collection of buckets etc that were mine as a kid.

I was worried about the boys falling on the rocks, so had them wear their trainers & trousers to cover their knees, even though both got soaked! Neither fell on the rocks, however Joseph (4.5) being the clumsy tall child that he is managed to fall over on the concrete slip way while I was getting their lunch out of the bag! He badly grazed all down the left side of his face, but it has healed well thank goodness.

The prawns & sea life that live in the rock pools are very quick & I don't think that the boys caught anything themselves but were more than happy 'fishing' and looking at what Mum & I had caught.

We managed about 10 prawns (varying sizes), lots of winkles (snails), a baby crab & a small fish (possibly a stickleback?). They lived in a seaweed & shell filled bucket whilst we had lunch then we returned them to a similar pool to which we had caught them.

If you go rock pooling please make sure you check the tides & keep an eye on it, getting cut off can be very dangerous. Also please check all your shells no longer have their owners as we accidentally managed to bring home 2 live winkles amongst our shells which Mum took home the next day on the bus after we had gone home. Thanks Mum :-)

x Jo x