Chillin' on Chesil Beach

April 29^th

Today I got up at 6:20 to get to the Highfield bus interchange by 8am. Luckily I had a cup of chai latte to get me through such an early start of the day. On the coach there were my oceanography crew (Michael, Claire, Emily, Emmeline, Rachel, David) waiting to get our trip started to Chesil Beach on Fleet Lagoon. After a two hour ride inside the coach, we were busting to get out. Drabbed in a jacket, a rain coat, yoga pants, ski socks, waterproof trousers, a woolen hat and hiking boots I marched out of the coach ready to take in the fresh air- and boy was there fresh air. The wind was intense, pelting the rain and hail on our faces. Fresh air or not, we were all ready to go back to the coach after about 15 minutes exposed to the elements.

After a few stops at various beaches and an old church that had experienced flooding various years, we reached a nice path along the coast where we walked through mud and grass. At this point my waterproof trousers were no longer waterproof and I dealt with my yoga pants sponging up the water and sticking to my legs- burr! Chris, an American marine biology student from North Carolina, was enjoying the use of his wellies taking almost every opportunity to jump in a puddle or wade out to the sea. During one of our stops he went out to the beach and when walking back one of his wellies was stuck in the sediment resulting in him walking out of it into the mud- bummer.

At our final stop, a few of us were brave enough to go out into the rain and cold again. The beach was fabulous, such a steep incline of the chert stones into the sea that the wave pattern just awed me. The water was very clear where you could see to the bottom a good distance. At one point Emily accidentally tried running in and out of the tide but the wave was too quick, resulting in her becoming very wet as she fell into the tide.

On the ride back David fell asleep in such an odd angle that I took a photo of him with Michael. There were so many laughs on this trip, it made for such a great day.

Once back home, Rich cooked dinner for all of us and afterwards we continued our Fighter Fantasy book, The Stealer of Souls, with Alec reading, Rich mapping and me rolling the die and drawing illustrations on the map.