| This was one of the worst forecasts,
the weather picture was not just blue but had green patches
too, but once again we got a pretty good day - just a bit
of breeze to keep the midges away. I broke with tradition
for a change and didn’t go out as planned onto the Blain
Hill but chose Dorlin, which was flat and suited the low tide.
A fair turnout with four explorers: Fern, Matthew, Robbie
L. and Rowan with four adult helpers, Michael, Philippa, Richard
L and Sandra, plus Ellie the expedition dog.
We started off by crossing the causeway to the island, but
before going to the castle we diverted to the left to see
the remains of the jetty, where Philippa’s father might
have landed in 1944. It is mostly reduced to a few bits of
rusting steel and one or two planks, but it has the look of
a wartime construction.
Then we approached the castle from the north side of the island,
a slightly more hazardous route than usual, and the young
explorers made their way up to the castle wall where they
found a fine slope for sliding down on the wet grass. It took
a bit of time to gather them again and go round to the little
bay where Robbie found a small crab at the water’s edge.
We looked at the snails on the rock face below the wall and
examined the old stone building before returning to the causeway
– a good deal more sliding was done at this stage. Another
attempt was made to fly the Livett kite, and this time it
worked well.
At the other side of the causeway, the explorers heard why
the army and navy were training in the area with a demonstration
using a stone to represent a landing craft. Then we went to
the Silver Walk, where Rowan found a spring in the beach and
we carried on down the walk to explore the Priest’s
Cave. We returned to the beach for a wafer break and walked
back past the Corsican Pines to the road end where the young
explorers found a couple of half-built dams across the stream
and decided to devote the rest of the morning to dam-building.
The adults carried on to look at the old fishery buildings
and came back to find the dam-builders soaking wet but still
reluctant to leave. When they did get to the Blue Parrot,
I was surprised to see that all of them had decided to draw
the grass slide by the castle. I have picked out Rowan’s
interpretation of the sliding.
John
Dye
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