The weather was very kind and we only had one day of mizzling rain so we were able to get out alot and try allsorts of exciting things. We were staying at berry head, brixham in the bay of Tor. We had some fantastic walks and found similiar foraging hedgerow finds that we would at home in Leicestershire such as cleavers, elderflower, hawthorn, clover amongst others.
As we were so close to many great beaches we had a few things on our list we had to do with the boys, such as crabbing, foraging on the sands and rock pooling. We were not dissapointed and I think every child and adult for that matter should have beach time looking for shells, crabs, mini beasts, fish, or other shellfish as it is just such good fun and exciting when you catch something. We caught many things but put most of them back you don't know what they have been feeding on.
Rock Pooling is great fun and you can get information from tourist information about the times of the times so you don't get caught out and can work out the best time to get out there and check out the pools. Small nets and buckets are always a good thing to buy whilst you are there and take with you. We found clams, mussels, shrimps, baby crabs and starfish looking in the pools, under the rocks and checking underneath the washed up debris. It is such a good feeling when you find something and we put everything in a bucket with sea water and then at the end we had a good look at everything, took some pictures and then careful placed everything back. My son loved jumping from rock to rock and checking out all the little nooks and crannies for sea creatures.
Something I have been meaning to do with my 6yr old is go crabbing as we have never had the opportunity to do it before and you have just got to try it. After buying some crabbing lines and talking to a few of the locals about the best spots we were off early one morning to brixham harbour. It is important you get the lines with little bait nets attached rather than just the hooks as the canny crabs just nick off with the food from the hooks smiling their little crabby smiles. We found out that they just loved pieces of raw smokey bacon and when they came along to grab it from the little nets there claws got tangled in the holes of the net and you can quickly haul them up.
We were settled in our spot with two lines in the water over the harbour wall and thought we would have to wait for ages so we were ecstatic and couldn't believe it when within 5 mins we had caught a crab on both lines, they must have been hungry. It was so cool, we were jumping up and down and squealing at our luck, within half hour we had 7 in the bucket and people were coming over having a look and chatting. Everyone wanted tips on catching them and we just grinned and said it must be beginners luck as it was our first time. We caught some good sized crabs and had 12 at the end of the hour and we put them all back afterwards so hopefully others could have as much fun as we did. You can imagine our faces afterwards, we were buzzing and grinning from ear to ear as we thoroughly enjoyed our crabbing experience and will definitely be doing it again when we are next visiting the coast.
One of the reasons I love bimbling around the countryside or coastal areas is that you just don't know what you are going to find and sometimes they are real little gems which give you such a great feeling and appreciation of our beautiful country.
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