Vitamin Sea

Pensarn Beach, Abergele is a fine place to go for a dose of Vitamin Sea.  It’s an SSSI, site of special scientific interest - because of its vegetated shingle bank, which is the best example of this feature in North Wales.  The smooth, rounded pebbles are all shades of grey, green, blue and plum and strewn with blue-green sea kale, silvery sea holly, sun-yellow trefoil, paper-white sea campion and sweet smelling wild roses. 

 

At the tide line, bickering oystercatchers flicker in black and white like the end of old movie reels.

Rafts of black ducks bob in the green water.  The information board confirms them as Common Scoter. They’re not that common really but they get thousands and thousands here over the winter.

I keep an eye out for the splash of porpoises.  A group of sea-skimming cormorants fly across the lenses of my binoculars, followed by two kleeping oystercatchers and a peeping ringed plover.  A small section of beach is roped off to protect the ringed plover nests and I watch a fluffy mottled chick whizzing over the stones like a clockwork toy.

Off shore, windturbines slice through the sky like circus knife throwers.

 

The pebbles are lovely to play with and before I know it, two hours have passed and it’s time for a chip butty on a bench with a view of bright plastic spades, twirling pink windmills and blue beach balls. Beaches are good places to be Slow.