Peace and pondering at the salt marsh

Last week we stayed at Pobty Cottage on the Isle of Angelsey. I've been excited about visiting this place since back in the winter when I saw photos of the swing seat under the big pine tree looking out over calm waters. The tide was so far out when we arrived that it was hard to imagine it could come right up to the garden wall. We even went out to check the high tide at midnight in our pj's. Seeing is believing!

The tide just crept it's way in, slowly and quietly, with no waves and no fuss

creating little islands on the way

until all the plants disappeared under the water.

And then, it would simply creep off again, leaving a new landscape to be discovered.

The sounds of the marsh took me right back to when I was 18 and I moved away from the city to art college and lived in Laugharne on a tidal estuary. At the time I couldn't believe where I had landed and would sit by the water with the mud popping and the curlews calling. It was a whole new world.

I realised it was exactly thirty (yes THIRTY!) years to the day since I started college! How did that time go by so fast? 

If I could have a little word with my eighteen year old self sitting on that bench by the salt marsh, I'd sit close and say 'Hannah, don't worry so much. It's all going to be ok. You're going to find a place for all the creative (and nervous) energy you have and you will find your own unique way to express yourself. You will even make a living doing it. Image that! Don't pay too much heed to the noise in your head, just go outside in nature and watch and listen and breathe. That's where the peace can be found. And by the way, nobody knows what they are doing... everyone is making it up as they go along! Now come on lets go and find some cool stuff and make some things....'

I was rather enamored by this plant that I had never noticed before and have discovered it to be the seed pods of Sea Arrowgrass. It was growing in spiky clumps at the edge of the marsh. Just look at all the colours in it's varying stages of decay!

And you've got to love a pebble with a perfect circle haven't you! It can't be just me?

I loved the rusty colours of these ones and it became a theme in my collecting.

Things began to gather on the windowsill of the cottage.

The lovely Welsh slate really set them off!

We absolutely loved Pobty Cottage and highly recommend it. It sleeps two, and dogs are welcome. One could stay there ALL the time, just swinging on the swing seat, watching the tide come in and out and the sun go up and down, 

but, even though it feels a million miles from anywhere, it's actually close to lots of beautiful white sandy beaches, forests and mountains too.

More adventures to follow....