Whelkom to the Tide-line

A wet and windy day with a continuous growl of surf and pebble-sand undertow. Blackpool sands, I discovered, is just a 20 minute walk from my cousin's house in Stoke Fleming. All downhill through fog and grey pines to a drenched beach - and all up-hill back again. 
What damp does though, is to bring out the colour of sea-treasures. These sea-weeds positively glowed with tawny russets, oranges and dark chocolate browns. Settled all amongst them, like a scatter of cream meringues were dozens of whelk egg-cases. A welcome sight, if they are truly representitive of previously hatched healthy babies.  Tributyltin, a chemical anti-foul on ships has decimated whelk populations, by causing female whelks to change into males.
Further on by the rocks there was a cache of white cuttlebones. They brought back memories of childhood when our old next door neighbour always asked us to bring her back one from our holidays - for her budgie to sharpen his beak on. 
There's one Mermaid's purse in the picture too- if you can spot it.

The sea was definitely too violent for swimming in my opinion, so later on I parked at the Warfleet inlet and tried there. On the plus side the water was relatively far less cold than the Northern lakes (not balmy though) but the narrow channel caused a wave-swash that ran both up and down and side to side which made getting in and out a question of timing. Not always successful and extra gritty.