Sealife, buoyancy aids and unicorns

There have been some interesting mammals spotted in the sea around the Cornish coast this week. My sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew-in-law having all been down to Cornwall and together with my Mum we have been enjoying spending time together. We have been lucky enough to encounter some of these marine animals whilst out walking with our two dogs.

On Sunday we went for a walk at the Helford, a series of saltwater creeks fringed by beaches, woodland and countryside walks. There had been rain overnight on Saturday but on Sunday this stopped, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. As the temperature rose so did the humidity and soon I was feeling really hot. After climbing up through a fairly steep wooded area we arrived at a pretty little secluded beach. Both of the dogs (mine and my sisters) were panting well, despite the fact that Billy still has very little fur on his back following a grooming incident (see last weeks post for an explanation of why this is). We therefore decided to go onto the beach to let the dogs paddle and cool down. When there the water looked so inviting my niece and I decided to paddle. Walking boots off, we waded in up to our knees. The water was cool but not cold and felt wonderfully refreshing. We discussed how we wished we had bought our swimming costumes with us, as the water looked so tempting we would have loved to swim.

Those of you who know me may well be surprised by this as I very, very rarely go in the sea. Although I live right by the beach I am scared of the sea. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I am scared of what's in the sea rather than the sea itself. My main fear is sharks and I blame Jaws for this, particularly the poster that was used to advertise it. I remember seeing the poster outside the cinema when I was young and it epitomises what frightens me about the sea. The picture showed idylic blue water with a woman swimming on the surface, unknown to her a shark is heading up towards her from the depths, its teeth glinting horribly. Since then, whenever I'm in the sea, I imagine all the things below the surface that are waiting to come up and bite me in half.

That's why my family was surprised when I said that I'd like to go swimming, in fact I was quite surprised myself. The more I paddled and watched the dogs splashing about in the shallows, the more I wanted to get in the water. The problem was that I was hot; the solution, the water was cool so get in the water. The problem was I didn't have a swimming costume; the solution, go in without a costume. No one else wanted to swim so I decided to take a dip on my own.

Despite it being a secluded spot I didn't feel confident enough to go skinny dipping so decided to take all of my clothes off except my pants, somehow I felt more decent that way. Asking everyone not to watch I undressed and started to walk into the water, before the sea had even reached my knees my sister had stripped off and had joined me. And that is how it came about that 2 middle aged women went practically nude bathing. When the water was waist deep the temperature dropped significantly, but we had to swim or else stand exposed and topless, scaring the seaguls. The water was cold but it was exhilarating and quite liberating.

What we should probably have thought about before we got in the water was what we were going to do after our swim. We hadn't brought swimming costumes with us as we weren't expecting to go swimming, so of course we hadn't brought any towels. My brother-in-law offered his cotton handkerchief for us to dry with and Mum a pair of socks, we blotted ourselves and tried to pull our clothes onto our still sopping wet bodies.

Whilst trying to drag our clothes on we could hear a gentle little phut phut noise. I listened to it for a while whilst contending with a very reluctant bra and keeping an eye on the coast path at the top of the beach to make sure that no one was watching. As I tried to untangle the arm of my shirt in order to put this on, I became aware that the phut phut was definitely getting louder. It occurred to me that the noise seemed to be coming from behind me so turned to look. A little fishing boat was approaching the beach, complete with fisherman and his small dog. My top immediately became a thing with a life of its own and the last thing it wanted to do was be worn. I coerced, cajolled, ranted at it and eventually wrestled it onto my still ringing wet body and in the nick of time was able to stroll nonchalantly down the beach, carrying my trousers, still wearing my dripping pants, with my shirt on inside out, collar turned under and arms twisted and contorted. I greeted the fisherman breezily and kept reminding myself that as far as he knew my wet pants could be bikini bottoms.

Later on that day we watched a seal bobbing around in the sea. It was so close to the shore we could even hear it clearing its nose of seawater as it exhaled. We watched it catch a fish and hold it in its front flippers and eventually eat it. We saw it watching the dogs and then it became interested in a man who was paddling. It was amazing to see it so well but also terrifying to think that a bit earlier we had also been in that very same sea.

The next day we saw another seal and a pod of five dolphins whilst we were doing another walk further up the coast. My nephew-in-law had just said that he'd like to see another seal when I spotted the dolphins which were swimming parallel to the coast so we had a good view of then for quite a while. For the rest of the day it's a miracle we didn't fall over the cliff into the sea as none of us were looking where we were going as we constantly had our eyes turned to the left searching the sea for whales, turtles, mermaids and sharks. In fact we might have walked past all sorts of amazing things on the inland side of the walk as we were so focussed on the water. If we had looked to our right we might have seen herds of unicorn grazing amongst flocks of dodos but now we will never know.

So an enjoyable visit from my family this week where we spotted some incredible sealife and discovered:

• You should always plan ahead and be prepared for spontaneous acts
• White pants aren't the best for maintaining modesty when wet
• When not confined by a swimming costume buxom women have 2 natural buoyancy aids
• If you keep your eyes peeled its amazing what you see (apologies to the fisherman who I suspect saw more than he anticipated)
• Wet bodies and dry clothes make dressing in a hurry nigh on impossible
• Even people you have known your whole life can still surprise you
• I think my sister may well have been a stripper in a previous life as she got her clothes off in a nano-second
• I have the best family, as not only did they look away when requested, there were no incriminating photos taken and they didn't hide our clothes.

The jury is still out on the merits of going commando though.