Walking on the Moon...

We took a stroll on the beach at Gimlet Rock yesterday.

The rain stopped just long enough for us to take a quick look around Pwllheli’s new Sunday market (only two weeks old, it’ll be interesting to see if it takes off) where I bought a milk-blue Opaline dousing crystal. Why? Well, so that you can read about the adventures of the amazing crystal douser in the future of course! And afterwards we drove up to Gimlet Rock to see what we could see.

Gimlet Rock (Carreg yr Imbill) was once a very large plateau of granite that dominated the coastline just off Pwllheli town. It was extensively quarried for stone paving by the Liverpool and Pwllheli Granite Company in the nineteenth century and today most of Gimlet Rock is in Liverpool and Manchester being walked upon by Liverpudlians and Mancunians respectively. Precious little of it remains at Gimlet Rock which, as the name suggests, is little more than a large rock now.

You reach Gimlet Rock by driving through a council estate, past the harbour, and then through a holiday park crammed with overpriced holiday chalets. Once there though you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d landed on the moon - if it wasn’t for the sound of the waves. It’s a little desolate. The beach and surrounding shoreline are strewn with chunks of granite (big, small, and huge) left over from the mining days. There’s even a large metal thing that looks a bit like a crashed rocket. We come here sometimes in the winter, park up and watch the waves, crabbing boats, beach-casters, and (if we are lucky) the occasional seal.

Today though, we are here for a stroll. So we scramble down the steep, rocky, shore and onto the steep, rocky beach. Sometimes the beach is littered with huge pink clam shells, washed up by the sea, but not today – today there is just rock. Pity really, I was looking forward to collecting some shells and taking them back. We have lots in our garden, at the front, in the gravel – maybe next time we’ll be luckier. We walk along the beach towards the remains of the old wooden jetty. It thrusts out of the gravel like the weathered ribcage of some long dead, abandoned, sea creature.

The ships that used to collect the huge blocks of granite from the jetty are just memories now, tens of decades gone - Manchester and Liverpool are concrete (not granite) built these days – but the jetty is still here. I’ve read that a quarryman’s life was a hard one, accidents frequent, men giving up their lives for the stone – onshore and at sea.

Watch out! Mind that you don’t trip over that big rock. It’s half hidden by the sand.

Look, what’s that? Are those seagulls sitting on the jetty posts? They don’t look like seagulls. What are they? They seem to be looking out to sea – watching for something, waiting for something maybe? They look like people (creatures) waiting expectantly for someone (something) to return… Are they figures? What are they doing here? Do you thi… Ouch! What was that? Something flashed past me. Did you feel it? It almost hit me. It felt sad. Like an old memory, not my memory though – someone else’s memory… someone else’s sad memory, here on the moon with my new dowser’s crystal hot in my pocket and guaranteed to find all things lost - maybe I should take it out and just... WAIT… Did one of them just move?

Come on, let’s leave. The winds getting up. I’m cold. I don’t think we’re wanted here today. We’ll come back another time. Perhaps next time we’ll find some scallop shells.