Birthday trip to the seaside, a child lost and found and the great Belzoni in Egypt

Today was Miss T.'s birthday and she had requested a visit to the seaside in the company of her friend Miss Garner. The sun shone favourably upon us as we set forth by car shortly before eleven am up the A10 to Hunstanton. In contrast to the same journey a fortnight ago, we found ourselves joining an ever increasing queue of sun-seekers with the same destination in mind. This necessitated a detour via Dersingham to avoid the crawling traffic.

On arrival, we first descended, or rather ascended to the Lighthouse Cafe for a luncheon and beverage. During our meal, the proprietress returned with a young girl, about three to four years of age, who had been found wandering lost and alone outside on the cliff path. Staff comforted her and kept her company till the arrival of the police in the shape of two reassuring young men who put the child at ease and carried the girl down the hill, reuniting the child with the relieved parents.

The first task on the beach was building a dam, something the ladies took to with alacrity and determination until in time honoured fashion, the rising waters in the blocked channel broke through.

The tide was ebbing and we had a long walk to find the actual sea. The feet sensed the transition from different sands, through silt to the final mud that oozed between the toes. I ventured further as the mussel and tube worm banks were gradually being exposed leaving pools.

Having seen Idotea linearis for the first time on the last visit, I encountered several more this time. To my delight, hermit crabs in periwinkle shells scurried across pools. If two encountered each other there would be a shocked pause and a scurrying apart.

Other finds included a periwinkle with barnacles that could be seen to be feeding in the still waters. Whilst the mussels appeared resolutely closed, the occasional cockle on the surface could be seen feeding with the shell slightly agape.

This being a particularly low tide, Miss Garner and I found no less than four common starfish. I thought the first dead until I turned it over and the tuber feet emerged questing vigorously for purchase until I returned the echinoderm right way up. I had just commented to Miss Garner on the regenerative ability of starfish to regrow lost limbs when she found a four armed specimen with a small fifth arm beginning to grow back.

Despite the disruption of people wandering along the shore line, feeding avocets and possibly knot wandered across the shell mounds. The gulls were still nesting in the cliffs and this time I made sure that I recorded these successfully (my previous photographs failed to capture them) with the camcorder.

Back home, I tried separating the light shell fraction from sand collected from the beach by washing it off into a dish from a plate, in a reverse of panning for gold. This was quite successful on first investigation with the stereomicroscope and the enriched fraction is now drying for future study on the window sill.

My marine aquarium also had three new additions; some red algal fronds, a mussel shell with two small barnacles and a stone with strange encrustations for future study.

For her birthday, Miss T had received a video set on ancient Egypt and we watched an episode, recounting the story of Giovanni Battista Belzoni and his recovery of the head of Rameses the great for the British Museum in the early 1800s. The program frequently referred to Belzoni's diary and I was delighted to find that Google Books had both a facsimile and a text version of "Narrative of the operations and recent discoveries within the pyramids, temples, tombs and excavations in Egypt and Nubia: and of a journey to the coast of the Red Sea in search of the ancient Berenice, and another to the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon, Volume 1" by Giovanni Battista Belzoni. Something I will have to read later.