Sandy Beach Memories

We are very fortunate to be spending our twilight years within easy reach of some fine sandy beaches, including this one at Littleferry which we visit around once a week to 'stretch our legs'. It's a great beach with over a mile of sand but it lacks something which, in my memory of my life's favourite beaches, most East African ones had in quantity....

....flotsam along the tidelines. I don't understand why our local beaches so lack it but, to me, it is one of the essentials of a good beach, even though the flotsam inevitably includes human rubbish. Of course the East African ones are blessed with being east-facing onto the Indian Ocean, with prevailing southeasterly and northeasterly winds to help bring the flotsam ashore. As a result, they collect....

....all sorts of interesting things like violet sea-snail and spirula (above) and sea-beans. I recall as a boy loving walking along the high-tide line searching for things of interest, particularly when we lived at the Hoey house which was right on the beach.

 

Sadly those lovely beaches are all in my past now, so I have to content myself with memories of them, the photos my mother put in the little album she gave me when I went off to school in England, and the photos I took on our three visits to Tanzania - of which the above is one of my favourites, looking up the beach to where the sun is setting, promptly at six, over the continent of Africa.