I remember holidays in Cornwall as a child where I have fond memories of the rock pools and all the amazing wonders they have to offer, so I was very keen to take my children rock pooling when we were in Cornwall.
The weather all week was not looking good, so we kept putting a beach visit off, until the last day. We got up and it was pouring with rain, but I said, ” this is our last chance….we’re going whether it’s raining or not” so off we went! Luckily, the rain stopped and it turned out to be the best day we had all week.
We went to Daymar beach, which was a beautiful small beach with sand, sea and small rock pools, perfect for little ones to explore. When we arrived the children immediately put on swimming costumes (how do they not feel the cold?) and headed straight for the sea. They had a great time jumping the waves, before deciding, actually it is a little cold and headed back up the beach to play in the sand for a bit.
BB built a very strange castle (if you can call it that) of where Father christmas lives (apparently?!). He spent ages telling me all about it, what each bit of it was for and how it all worked, it was fascinating to listen to his imagination! It was such an amazing creation!
Next we all grabbed our buckets and nets, which were borrowed from Coombe Mill for a bit of rock pooling. It was quite slippery, but the children soon got used to it and were very excited at finding things in the little pools. Their favourite things to find were snails. They literally found loads of them and collected them in the buckets. That was fine, except when it was time to put them back, we couldn’t just gently tip them back into a pool, as they had all stuck themselves to the buckets, so we had to prize them off one by one!
The children also loved spotting crabs, little fish and just about anything that looked interesting. We all had such a great time rock pooling together and I think the kids learnt a lot about how much tiny life there is in the sea. I hope we can do this again one day.