Tag Archives: fossils

Wednesday Wander – Watchet, Somerset

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This little harbour town in Somerset is has neither the fame of San Francisco nor the glamour of Biarritz, yet it is where I’m wandering this week.

Watchet is a charming place with an ancient history, situated at the mouth of the River Severn. An Iron age hill-fort nearby, later re-fortified by Alfred the Great, is said to be the origin of the settlement, with the harbour originally named Gow Coed by the Celts, meaning ‘under the wood’. Across the water lie the misty hills of Wales and it is from the harbour, looking at the view, that Coleridge is said to have been inspired to write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. A statue marks the spot, the Ancient Mariner and his albatross together for eternity.

We stayed in a pink-painted cottage with a view of the sea, walking the cobbled streets to the local pub or fish and chip shop, wandering the bric-a-brac and antique stores (where I scored an excellent pair of vintage boots).

A trip to the nearby beach produced further treasure in the shape of fossils – ammonites and oyster shells frozen in time for millions of years, tumbled among the stones that lined the shore.

As we walked back from the beach we took a bramble-lined path running between the trainline and the sea. In the 19th century, Watchet was a centre of the industrialised paper industry, its products travelling country-wide. Now the tracks are used by commuters and sightseers, and it was a rather special day. The famous Flying Scotsman steam train was in town, taking people on journeys through the beautiful green countryside. People lined the tracks to watch it pass, and so did we.

We had only a couple of days in Watchet, yet it made an impression that lingers, of hidden houses down curving streets, distant hills and fossil beaches, and water that changes with the sky and tides. I hope to go back there one day…

Thanks for coming on another Wednesday Wander with me – see you next time!

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Wednesday Wander – Aughris House, Sligo

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This is the Beach House at Aughris, Ireland, an ancient pub and B&B that happens to serve very fine meals. Sitting on the curve of a silvery bay, it looks across the shifting sands to mountains and the burial cairn of a legendary queen, while the stones on the beach contain fossils even older still, treasure for small hands to find.

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There is not much in the way of so-called civilisation to be seen in these parts – just a few other houses behind the dunes, cattle calling in the evergreen fields. Yet not far away is a burial ground that predates the pyramids, vast stones levered into place to mark and protect the dead by a culture long gone.

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The streams run clear and cool from the misty mountains to the edge of the Atlantic, the ocean stretching West to new lands. And the evening brings warmth, music and good food to be had, with a place by the roaring fire.

Thank you for joining me on another Wednesday Wander – see you next time!

Hugh’s Photo Challenge Week 11 – Rust

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I’ve written about this object before. We found it on a beach in Ireland, just a little way around from where I photographed my rock face. We’d decided to climb along the rocks at the water’s edge to a small cove we could see in the distance. It turned out to be a fairly challenging undertaking, especially with a seven-year-old in tow, as the rocks became quite steep, deep pools of clear sea water just below our feet. But what amazing rocks they were! Full of fossils and layered and stacked, lines of colour showing how the landscape had built up over millennia.

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We made it, eventually, to the little rocky cove, and found the pebbly beach strewn with bits of rusting twisted metal. The rusty object above was quite large and weighed an absolute ton, as I discovered when I tried to move it. The pebbles were in it when we got there – whether put there by the ocean or another human hand I don’t know. So I took a photo, captivated by the rusty colours against the grey stones. And now I’m entering it into Hugh’s latest Challenge.

Hugh’s Photo Challenge – Week 10 – Faces

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This is for Hugh’s Weekly Photography Challenge, with this week’s theme being Faces. But not faces where you would expect to find them – rather, faces that appear unexpectedly.

Like this rock.

I found it on a beach in Ireland, on the northwest coast where the Atlantic rolls in and the rocks are filled with fossils. I don’t think him a fossil, unless a pixie decided to leave his smile etched into rock for all eternity, but I did think his wry expression worth capturing.

🙂

Unearthing Ideas

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Where do ideas come from? Ambeth was inspired, as I’ve said before, by something that happened to me when I was a child. But it has grown and evolved, the characters telling me things and taking me down paths I didn’t realise were there, and I’ve learnt to sit back and let them tell the story, my fingers mere conduits on the keyboard for what they wish to say. I’ve a few other ideas floating around – a house full of leaks, a glimpse of something in the Thames, a porcelain cap for my tooth, a dead woman – they are all jumping off points for other stories that are still percolating in my brain, waiting to come out.

I’ve heard the feeling of finishing a story being described as ‘entering open water’ – heading out to sea. But for me the analogy that rang true immediately came from the great Stephen King. He described finding a story as ‘unearthing a fossil,’ and as soon as I read those words I could see mine. Can still see them, poking out from the forest floor, delicate carapaces of bone or polished wood, it’s hard to tell as I unearth even more of them. Three are now clear of the ground, the stories complete, just a bit of polishing required. The others are still offering up new discoveries, new aspects every time I look at them, whether it is a change of only a few words or a whole new idea. But the important thing is that I keep looking at them, keep exploring the angles, the nooks and crevices, until the job is done, the story told.

Perhaps it is something to do with the way a writer’s brain works. That we can take a single small event, or notice something strange while out for a walk and spin from them a story. Ideas are everywhere, if you care to look for them.