It's always a pleasure to visit the beach at Dinas Dinlle because the quality of the light and the views, towards The Rivals in the west and Holyhead mountain to the north. It's a location that is popular with artists, such as Tina Holley. We have a print of her painting of Dinas Dinlle beach in the guest lounge, although it does not seem to be available at the moment on her website.

As well as the views there are often interesting things to be found washed up on the shore. For some reason we seem to find items of a specific type washed up at a particular time. For example, we frequently find thousands of mussel shells washed up, or great heaps of seaweed, but not generally at the same time. Why is that?

At the end of the summer we found large numbers of crab shells deposited at the low water mark. I think they were from Spiny Spider Crabs, and I assume that they had all moulted at a time dictated by some combination of the season, the sea temperature, the tide or (which is I suppose the same thing) the phase of the moon. I'm not sure if this was an unusual occurrence, but I have not seen any since.

More recently we found large numbers of eroded whelk shells. But why nothing else? Was it just the shape that caused them all to be deposited together? A mysterious thing, the sea!

Hopefully by the time the new holiday season starts, the damage caused to the foreshore by the recent storms will have been fully repaired. A large stretch of the bank at the top of the beach was washed away at the end of the year, undermining part of the tarmac path running along the eastern end of the beach. When we were there after Christmas the council were dropping huge boulders for protection, but the shingle was still strewn all over the foreshore. We didn't stay long on that occasion, as great gobbets of foam were being blown across the beach and the wind was freezing! Luckily it has been much quieter since, and hopefully will remain so.