HARTLAND QUAY

Yesterday Graham and I skived off for an hour or so and went to Hartland Quay, where we had a brief walk (or in my case a brief hobble) and photographed the sea. Why, I wonder, was it so foamy (I believe that the correct term is `spume`)? There is always some there but I don't think that I have ever seen it quite that pronounced.

There was a sea-serpent sighting off Hartland Point sometime in the late 19th Century. When I was a young teenager in the early 1970s my family used to go to Clovelly church each Sunday. There was a very old man in the congregation most weeks and knowing of my interest in such things, he once told me that his father had been a fisherman out of Clovelly, and that he had seen a strange creature with a long neck off Hartland Point.

The trouble is that I cannot remember any more details of the story, and I can't even remember the old chap's name, so I cannot chase up his family. Both my parents are dead, as is the vicar of the time, and everyone we used to go to church with. Has anyone else any records from this part of the Bristol Channel?

And while you are at it, why so much spume? The winds were not particularly high or anything....