WHISPERING SMITH: From the shoreline to the sea

A few weeks back someone posted an old photograph of our summer crowded beach with the caption '˜we used to have a beach worth visiting'. Written in jest I suspect but it did get me to thinking...

We still do have one and I visit it almost every day. It is always a little changed and very photogenic. Crowded and noisy in summer and restless in winter. Cheap Spanish flights and package holidays put an end to the so-called glory days when long lines of adults with children carrying buckets and spades filed down from the railway station and the coach park was full.

However, continental holidays in no way diminished the beauty and diversity of wildlife seen on our shoreline and there are an abundance of photographs regularly published in the Gazette and on Facebook – some of them mine – which illustrate that point.