Kent Beachcombing Guide - Deal to Beginning of Sandwich Bay Estate

Though the town of Deal itself is lovely, I have to admit that Deal beach is not the best place to go beachcombing, I'm going to find it hard to write this guide as after 3 hours walking and scanning, from Deal to the beginning of Sandwich Bay Estate, we found hardly anything at all.

The high tide line was pretty much non existent, and any shells that had been thrown up on the beach had been quickly smashed. It was clear that Deal beach does not catch much in the way of 'sea treasures' - It seems as if everything is pushed into Sandwich Bay instead. IMO There is a huge difference in beachcombing at Sandwich. (one of the best places I've been beachcombing) and Deal (one of the worst places I've been beachcombing)

Deal's great for fishing though, and the shingle beach makes a nice spot to sit and have fish and chips.

It's Spring! The Sweet Violets are Out!

In my opinion Spring arrives with the first sweet violet flowers! They have suddenly burst into flower and there are literally thousands where I live. The sweet violet flower is one of my favourite wild treasures of all. They are so tiny and beautiful, such an awesome shade of purple, and they smell heavenly.

I planted my own sweet violets last year, I saved the plants from the paving cracks around my estate before the council started their weed spraying program and re-homed them in tubs. These are the ancestors of the original sweet violets that were planted when this area was a stately home and gardens in the 1600', which I think makes them even more special.

They grew quite bushy last year but I wasn't sure if they would flower, in-fact they've just started flowering - yay! When I checked my tubs I had enough sweet violet flowers to start drying them -sweet violet is a medicinal plant, as well as being highly decorative.

 The picture shows some of the sweet violet flowers that I picked this morning, ready to be dried.

Finding Old Pottery

Where to Find Old Pottery

Old pottery can be found almost anywhere humans have been - ploughed fields, on beaches, river banks and streams and on waste ground. In the past, before rubbish collection was organised, with formal dumps, every home had their own 'trash heap' where broken pottery and other trash would have been dumped, or buried. There would also have been larger dumps around the countryside which can show up on old maps sometimes as an in-filled area. 

Pottery Finds 

I have found quite a bit of interesting pottery just walking around local fields and crossing the stream, which has bars of pebbles where a lot of pottery seems to build up after flooding. 

The pottery I find can be of all ages, some I suspect to be very old, Iron age and Roman, but this will be scattered amongst more recent patterned and glazed pieces, like the blue and white pottery. 

Bits of really old pottery, anything like this I save to be given to the heritage dept at my local council. They identify and post the finds on a data base. 

This one has a design, the piece in the photo shows what looks like a horses leg, galloping. I bet this pot was really beautiful complete. I have no idea of the age of this pot. I don't think it's extremely old though

A medieval roof tile, if I picked up every medieval roof tile that I found I would actually have enough to tile a roof! How many medieval tiles does one woman need? Lol!

I have found a few pieces of this in the past, at first I thought it was part of a thick, shallow, bowl, but I am wondering if it might be part of a pottery wheel. I will have to do some research into tools that medieval potters used. 

I also find little pieces of blue and white china in the field, it has all kinds of different patterns, there has been no dwelling in that field for a long time, so I wonder why they are there, I suspect that 
people used to go round smashing plates in the middle of  fields for fun in times gone by, or perhaps in those days farm labourers would take their lunch to work on a fancy blue and white plates, and break them by accident.

The fields and river where I found most of these pieces (except 1 which was found on a beach) has not had any buildings or a rubbish dump there for 300 years at least. I find this interesting and perplexing as the fields look as though someone has been on a pottery smashing rampage, was there some point in history that blue and white china was outlawed and it all had to be taken to the fields and smashed? Lol! I joke of course, but how the hell does it get there?

The larger piece is interesting as it has a C worked into the willow pattern, I wonder who C was? The great artist Sydney Cooper had a house pretty near by so maybe it's one of his monogrammed plate, that would be exciting.

My favourite piece of blue and white china is the one in the photo below, found at Folkestone beach, this one has a lovely feel to it, quite fine china, and the pattern is very bright and fresh looking. I love the flowery china pieces.

Soon I will start to research some of these china bits, and try to find pictures of how they would have looked intact.

Cloud Spotting

Cloud spotting is a great way to amuse kids on car rides, walks, or even when they are stuck at home bored. Of course cloud spotting is fun for adults too, I take a look out of my window everyday to see what the clouds are doing, and subsequently have began to learn more in-depth about the weather in general and of course the different types of clouds.

Kids are always curious to know what's what in the world, and learning the clouds is a great way to get them interested in natural sciences, photography, weather, etc.

Cloud spotting can be tricky occasionally, clouds and formations can sometimes be hard to identify, and not everyone has the answers their kids are looking for when identifying clouds. A good way to cloud spot would be to take pictures of any interesting looking cloud formations while out and about, then once home download the pictures and try to identify the clouds using the internet. The more clouds you compare and see, the more you will begin to be able to identify the clouds by yourself and so will the kids.

Geode Hunting

One of the first exciting things that I found when I was little was a half geode. I found it on Herne Bay beach, lying in the shingle. I was walking on the promenade above with my family, and spotted the crystals sparkling in the sun, it was a flint nodule with a large cavity, and tiny sparkling yellow quartz crystals inside, the geode had been split open by the sea.

Since that day, whenever I feel I'm in the right environment I have a little hunt about for geodes, and half geodes. I have to say that by far the best place I have ever found geodes, and minerals in general, has been in the mountains around Granada, Spain.

I picked up so many pieces of rock from Andalucia that my airport case was far too heavy to pass the 25kg weight limit. You should have seen my ex-boyfriend's fathers face as I unpacked various large crystal and rocks from my bags in a panic at the airport terminal.

I managed to keep three of my favorites, but left some beautiful rocks behind in Spain. The quartz crystals in the photo to the left are quite large, they were inside a round but crusty gray rock, really rocky looking. I gave it a smash with a hammer and broke off this piece.

Old Pipe Found on Beach

My friend found this old pipe on the beach tother' day. He found it within five minutes of arriving at the beach (at 5 bloody am, in near darkness.) It was up on the high tide line stranded on the seaweed, and apart from missing half of the bowl, the stem was nearly intact.

The pipe looks brown in the picture, but was originally white. It has a stamp on the bowl. The stamp is the initial T.D, inside a heart, with a flower shape under the initials. I had a look online and found the same stamp on pipes from the 1600's-1700's. I read that a good way to date a pipe is to measure the hole in the stem. You can do this with small drill bits. We have not measured it yet, but intend to. It has a line down it that suggests that this pipe was made in a mold.

Types of Clouds - Low Level Cloud Types

I am attempting to take photographs of all the different types of clouds for my blog, while doing this I'll be learning about the cloud formations myself, and what kind of weather they bring.

 I am hoping to get a shot of all of the basic cloud types this year, and will be adding to this series as I take more pictures.

This post focuses on low level clouds, the five cloud types that are shown in my 'low level cloud type' infographic to the right.

Cumulonimbus Clouds

These clouds often mean a storm or bad weather is approaching, thunder, lightning, heavy rain, or hail. If a cumulonimbus cloud has developed a towering anvil shape this is called a cumulonimbus inca, or supercell. It's from these beasts that tornado's are formed.

The photos show some cumulonimbus clouds that I've snapped. Both of these were taken just before a huge storm.

Is A Storm Coming?

The best way to find out the answer to the question "Is there a storm coming?" is to look at some weather data charts. These are really simple to understand once you know how, and the best way to predict a storm.

In this article I will be looking at some weather charts, and explaining how to read them. This is a very basic introduction to weather charts and in no time you will be able to answer the fateful question "Is there a storm coming?"

The pic shows an incoming storm that I snapped whilst on a walk. Find more of my storm pictures here.

Using Pressure Charts to Predict a Storm

Possible storms can be predicted fairly early on about a week to nine days before the event, using a pressure chart. You can track the areas of low pressure across the charts, which update every four hours. You can also track the predicted area of low pressure for as long as the chart will allow.

Of course over a week or nine days a storm can fizzle out, change it's track, or intensify. You will not get a complete picture of the storm until at least 24 hours before the event, or later. At this point the different model weather charts start to line up with each other, and become pretty accurate.

Storm Pictures

 I took these storm pictures whilst out on a walk with my dog, (luckily she has no problem with storms). There seemed to be two storms, one from the right which we could see in front of us, and one to the left, which we didn't see until we turned a corner and came out of a small piece of woodland.

It was a pretty strange sight, with some awesome cloud formations. There was lightning from the left and right, and in the middle the sky was blue and calm.

The two storms seemed to move across the sky and join each other to make 1 big storm. We left when the two storms joined and it began to thunder and lightning quite badly. Of course we lost the dog lead in our panic, and had to re-trace our steps in the pounding rain, until we found it!

My Pet Sea Slater

This post is made up of three articles that I originally wrote on Bubblews about my 'pet' Sea Slater - (A marine woodlouse...) Yes, I'm weird, lol! . Anyhoo' I am deleting all of my posts from that site and will be re-housing some of them here on this blog.

Shrodingers Prawn

(originally published on Bubblews 21st August 2013) 

I had no idea that a little sea creature had hitched a ride home with me until he shot out of a rock that I was admiring on my dining table. He gave me the shock of my life and I screamed. "Eurgh there's a prawn thingy!" My partner shouted "Cool!" and the creature shot back into the stone.

I felt really bad that the poor thing had come home with me, so I filled my beachcombing box-bag with pebbles and tried to make him a nice environment to stay in until I could take him back to the beach.

I made some salt water with a very random guess of how much salt to use, 1tsp for about a cm of water in my box, and I added some sea clay that was stuck on some of the fossils that I had not washed yet. (I figured the sea clay would have minerals etc and small stuff that it can eat)

Anyway, with this done, I closed my box and he became Scrodinger's prawn until this morning when I finally managed to get some proper equipment to look after him properly.You can see him in this photo in the temporary home I made him inside my fossil box. As you can see, he is very much alive still - yay!