Aldeburgh & Swimming with a Seal - 20th Aug ‘19

A red letter day today. I got to swim with a seal!
More on that later.

We got ourselves ready and out earlier today to go to MR King at Halesworth to get a new tyre.  We had a very pleasant couple of hours while Rob sorted us out.

Halesworth is a truly lovely little market town. All the shops are local with lots of interesting cafes and unique specialist shops. We had breakfast at a gorgeous little place called DeArgentiens https://www.deargenteins.co.uk/ I had a fabulous breakfast board. Sad story though ... it’s due to close down for good at the weekend.

Once we were mobile again we headed off in the sunshine to Aldeburgh. Yet another fabulous Suffolk costal town. Different to Southwold but in many ways just as appealing. We parked by the beach outside the town and walked into the centre along the fairly deserted pebbled beach.

A few hundred yards into the journey Kim commented on a dog swimming in the water. At first glance it didn’t look much like a dog as it was spending as much time under the water as it was above the water.  Now as you dear blog reader may not know, Kim is partial to a drink but not this early in the day, so it didn’t take her long to realise it wasn’t a dog but a seal. I reached for the camera and got a few pictures.

There were very few folks around so, as I had my swimming shorts with me, I decided to climb into them and see if I could get closer. It seemed to be just sleeping with its head above the water and it’s eyes closed. I managed to swim around the back of it and got within 6 feet. It then certainly realised I was there - it’s huge eyes opened where previously there had just been slits. We looked directly at each other neither of us knowing quite what to do. It seemed like ages but I guess it was less than a second, then the seal just turned and bolted. He stayed in view but another 50 metres out to sea. Too far for me to repeat the manoeuvre.

Me on the left, the seal on the right. Just in case of confusion!

Unfortunately Kim managed to stop filming just as the dramatic moment happened! The Roger Deakins award for Cinematography goes to ...

Kim Googled it and apparently these Harbour Seals are very rarely seen on the beach at Aldeburgh, so I had indeed been incredibly fortunate to have my “face to face” experience.

So much else to look at in Aldeburgh - beach, shops, nice old historical buildings, fresh fish stalls - I had a nice smoked mackerel as I continue to flirt with the idea of becoming a pescatarian!!

We wandered on up to the town and it felt very appropriate to buy a seal door stop. He’s been christened Aldeburgh. We spoilt our perfect afternoon at Aldeburgh by having a very average and quite expensive meal at Delphine’s Diner. We were starving and there was a very long wait so we both ended up a bit hangry! They were only taking cash as well so a bit of a dead loss all round!

I had heard that Sizewell beach was nice so we drove home via Thorpeness and Sizewell. If you ignored the 2 huge nuclear power station looming above you then I would have to agree - Sizewell beach is beautiful. We had a very pleasant 30 minute walk with pretty much the whole beach to ourselves.

Back home to Brunnehilda for another quite night of reading and Canasta. It is so nice not watching TV. There is so much rubbish on that you end up watching dross for the sake of it - as Brucie says ...’57 channels and nothing in!’ No TV so no dross!