Tuesday 15 September 2009

At the risk of being boring,.. I wanted to show you these lovely sea urchins again. They are part of my treasures from Antigua.

They are so delicate once dried out but so vicious in the sea. If you are unlucky enough to tread on one and get one of the black spikes stuck in your foot, it is extremely painful. I've heard that an immediate remedy is to get someone to pee on the wound!! (or is that for jellyfish sting ?) Luckily I didn't have to try !

My children & I collected these lovely sea urchins last winter on a magical beach with the perfect picture postcard palm tree bending towards the crystal clear sea. We went snorkeling and I found that I was quite relaxed and quite good at it. DD exclaimed, " I'm going with mum, Dad's too scared to swim over the coral ! "

We were on the beach early in the morning before anyone else ventured over from the other yachts out at anchor. We left footsteps in the sand and collected driftwood ready for a night time fire.

We saw stingrays, squid and a turtle. The fish were stunning and made me giggle - not a good idea while wearing a snorkel !

When we worked in Antigua several years ago, we took a holiday before we came home and explored the island. One of the actors who has played Bond was on the same beach as us & my husband got chatting with him about their boys playing in the sand. It was very amusing because we didn't gush & ask for his autograph... just two dads on the beach talking about their boys. He was on holiday... and so were we.

8 comments:

  1. Sounds divine. I feel such an affinity with the sea and shore. It is like a compass for me. I am really enjoying being back by the sea, after 14 years of being landlocked in Berkshire, well we did have the river, but it isnt the same.

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  2. I go to the beach every day with the dogs...it's so incredible down there.

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  3. How lovely! What a nice post to read on a Tuesday morning, thanks for sharing. Xx

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  4. Ooh, a Bond story to go with the lovely shells... You are spoiling us!

    I am amazed you got these shells home in on piece - my son collected loads on the beach in Brittany and they had to come home in my bike bag - no chance! I took a photo of them and that's the only memory we'll have of them. However, the boys did collect one or two on the Med and the Atlantic this year which still had their spines in, and those seem to be standing up to life (death?) a bit better.

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  5. I wrapped them in layers of loo roll and put them in a large plastic food container and only had one or two casualties...one being a lovely fragile sand dollar.

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  6. You pee on a wound to disinfect it, cos urine is a disinfectant. Frankly if you were to step on one of them, you'd probably wet yourself anyway!!

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