Low tide at the lighthouse

With a solar eclipse today, and a new moon so thin I haven't spotted it yet, the tide was exceptionally low early this morning when we took the dogs down to the lighthouse. Last week the tide was low enough to gather black mussels, but the rocks had been picked clean the day before by a group of about thirty (according to local talk) who had just stripped the mussel beds without regard for the law of conservation which restricts you to 50 a day per person and you have to have a permit for them. The law enforcement officers were called to attend to their duty, but as is always the case, fear of intimidation or worse kept them well away from the scene until most of them had left.

Today we were alone down there and the most inaccessible mussels were now exposed by the low tide. Although the shells were very big, when they were steamed open the mussels were very small, as if they hadn't had enough food for a long time. So the gatherers last week probably had very slim pickings indeed which serves them right. It's very difficult to encourage a culture of conservation and awareness of the need to consider future generations in those who have no interest in such things. These things aside, it was lovely down there, with no wind and not a soul in sight.

We've been going down there for more than thirty years - seems like it's gone by in a flash. It's quite different to be level with the sea down on this vast, very smooth shelf of rock which was once the sea bed, rather than looking down from the path at the top of the jumble slope of rocks which have piled up on the shoreline over millenia. When the tide rises, the rocks are covered quickly, rather in the way an estuary covers up its mudflats as the sea rushes upstream. In winter, massive seas rush up the rocky slope but never make it to the top, as it is a perfect natural barrier to dissipate the power of the sea, rather like the 'dolosse' that are used at harbours around our coastline. I often wonder what it was about this short section of coastline that caused the boulders to pile up - it hasn't happened anywhere else on the Peninsula as far as I am aware - perhaps it is the feature that the geologists refer to as a wavecut platform. I'd love to know.

HWCFA and Monty at the edge of the rocks

A quiet scene showing the slope of rounded boulders

Solitude