A Tale of Treasure... Allen style

OK, this post is going to be told by images more than words... the photos speak louder than words anyway :o) A tale of adventure from our holiday in Cornwall, it happened a week or so ago...

.

One lovely sunny day, the Allen family and their 2 dogs went rockpooling; the tide was waaaay out so there were many more rockpools to explore than usual. A very enjoyable morning was spent mooching around, finding little treasures - shells, bits of driftwood, buoys, fishing weights. Moma Allen took lots and lots of photos for inspiration, peering into rock pools trying to capture the colours and textures of rock, sea creatures & sea weed. A large rusting anchor needed several photos to capture its beautiful colours.

.

As they got to the furthest point, they discovered a sheltered place with high rocks around 3 sides... and lying in the middle...

Was a huge, very interesting, and obviously very old piece of driftwood, lying in a murky puddle.

Daddy Allen is a carpenter by trade, and loves wood. This big old piece of oak got his imagination going straight away... where did it come from? How old is it? HOW long has it been in the water to be so shaped by the tides?

How am I going to take this home? He was figuring out just how to get this huge (6 1/2ft) and very heavy soaking wet piece of oak up the cliffs and a mile or more in either direction before we could collect with the car.

Ever resourceful - the dog leads came in useful. The dogs thought he had gone mad & mistaken a log for one of them :o)

Once at the top it took Matthew & me at the front with a dog lead each, and Gary at the back. Rachael was overseeing the operation and carrying dog water bottles etc. What a funny sight we must of been! Luckily about 1/4 of a mile up the coastal path, we took a chance and headed up a tiny walkway toward some beautiful houses - my reasoning being they were sure to have road access. This was very narrow so Gary shouldered the log by himself.. fortunetely it wasnt too far till we reached a rough road. Gary and Matthew jogged back to collect the car.

It had 4 days to dry out sitting raised on slate outside our tent (looked like we had built a bench :o) Before it was time to come home...

Dont worry, it wasnt really as low on the arches as the picture suggests - it was very uneven ground here & the back tyre was at the highest point.

First day back home...

Sculpted by the gentle hand of Mother Nature - 'the Needle'

Gary set our new piece of garden art in place, the bottom 18" are buried.. its very steady. The corner with the picnic bench has been a bit of a dead area until now, characterless & unused. Its going to be our coastal corner now :o) Ive strung the buoys on fishermans rope and hung them on the fence. There is going to be a shingle area around the Needle, with boulders, sea pinks and Livingstone daisies (they`re the closest I know to pink sea daisies). Just hope they can survive there - its quite shaded most of the time being right by the woods.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun... and we do love driftwood - this really was treasure to us (all 4 of us)

xx