8.00am Tuesday 31 July 2012

Swell is a small 1 foot with a light force 2 southeasterly cross/offshore breeze.

Tides
High 04.58 3.5m
Low 11.02 0.9m
High 17.16 3.9m
Low 23.34 0.7m

Tide information sponsored by Finnegans Shop Rossnowlagh

Below, photos of my favourite end of the beach, followed by assorted sand structures and excavations, so many that I wonder if there was a sandcastle competition that I didn't hear about. All spared by the neap tide that didn't come all the way up the beach last night.

 Thoughts on Sandcastles

Starting with the ring fort style castle. This design must be built into Irish DNA - check how many hills close to the beach are topped with bronze age structures very similar to these.

This one above is an exact of Eamain Macha in Armagh, complete with watering/bathing section for the horses of King Conor's army. Is this builder a re-incarnated Red Branch Knight?

 This one below is of more British construction, probably late Victorian. I remember a picture of this castle in the school reading book I learned to read in, some time in the mid-20th century in a Fermanagh primary school. It was built by siblings Dick and Dora and their friend Malcolm, using pails and spades. If it wasn't for the picture, my classmates and I would never have figured out what a pail was. Just look at all those marvellous outer defences! Positively Imperial! At this level, you could make sandcastle building into an Olympic sport.

And now for the tunnelers. The beach is pitted with rudimentary pits and tunnels abandoned by their creators who probably figured out that there were easier ways of escaping from the beach or maybe just got distracted by the ice cream van. Here below are the finest speciments of tunnelling, including these first 2 connected tunnels.

This one below looks malicious, designed to boobytrap an unwary car or bicycle or night time pedestrian. Watch out for it. It could wreck a shock absorber.

And finally an example of the many unfinished developments on the beach.  I wonder if Nama could be persuaded to buy them with taxpayers money before Thursday's spring tide levels them all.