Shrimping summers...

Here’s Criccieth castle late afternoon, early spring, crisp, sunny day – last Saturday.

I’ve rock-pooled in these pools with Holly. Caught shrimps hidden in the deep green weed and cooked them for our tea. Not last summer, but the summer before, and before, and before.

As a role of thumb they need to be about the size of a little finger to make them worth cooking, so I guess it’s a rule of finger really. The shrimps hide in the weed around the rocks so swoop your net into the weed and scoop up. Most times you get none, often a few -or even dozens- far too small to eat, but occasionally you will get a big one and once we had six big ones in a single netting.

Holly would never lift them out of the net and even after boiling in salted water for three minutes and serving with buttered brown bread and lemon she wouldn’t touch them until they were prepared. I had to patiently peel them for her, heading and tailing and peeling the translucent orange shells and placing them in the dish in the centre of the table. A pile of peeled prawns, worth it though to see her face as she enjoyed eating the shrimps that she’d caught.

We didn’t go shrimping last summer – no time, the weather, too busy, the tide. Maybe this summer we’ll shrimp together again, who knows?