Skip to my Looe, my darling

This week's summer holiday expedition has been a trip on the Looe valley line from Liskeard to (surprise, surprise) Looe. It's a pretty low cost trip at £3 a return for adults and £1.50 for children over 5. It's not a long journey, but it is a picturesqueak one. The children were quite excited by going on a proper train ride. The driver has to get out and change his own points partway through the journey, which added interest.

Looe is a picture-postcard seaside/fishing town: lots of tight narrow streets with a multitude of souvenir shops, surf shops, eateries of all ilks and a working harbour. We walked from the station into the town and decided to try another form of transport: a boat trip round Looe Island and the bay. It was a gorgeous day, and the children were delighted with the bob-bob-bobbing. We were the only ones on our particular trip, which was quite nice. The skipper told us we might get to see a seal and after a little to & froing and radio conversations between various boats, we were lucky enough to find it and see it swimming. S made up some sea shanties featuring the seal on the way back into harbour, and T joined in for the chorus.

Lots of people were crabbing off the harbour walls, and S had a yen to do it too, but I wussed out, not being too fond of bits of fish or for that matter, scuttling creatures with excessive amounts of legs. I'm hoping that M will go with us another time for that kind of malarkey. It's actually more the bits of fish I have a problem with than the skittering beasties.

We headed towards the beach, stopping off to admire the RNLI lifeboats, as they were open to the public. The beach is rather nice, sand rather than shingle, and although Looe itself was incredibly busy, it wasn't at all crowded. We walked along by the water and collected shells. S was pleased with her recycling ways when she found a loose carrier bag and used it to put her shells in. At the far end there were some rockpools to investigate, so it had a lot to interest the children even though we weren't properly equipped for the beach, as I hadn't initially planned to go there. Usually we would need buckets & spades & swimming costumes etc, but on this occasion they were happy with just scooting along at the water's edge and filling their bag with bits of shell.

The children were nicely tired out for the train ride back, and snoozed in my arms.