Landlocked Mermaid

Happy Earth Day! This is my third year celebrating Earth Day and this year marks the 50th anniversary . As we are still on lockdown and to keep you lovely people safe, this year we have done litter picks in isolation. I want say a huge thank you to everyone who took part and thank you for all the great pictures. Hopefully, next year we will be able to celebrate together. For now, enjoy the pictures. TEAM JET WASHERS Thank you Carole, Tori, Arthur, and Jet Wash WiggleBum. TEAM HOLLAND Thank you Sue. TEAM MOLOCK Weirdest find: Definitely the pants and jacket which were in the river. Honestly thought I was about to discover a dead body! I love doing the Earth Day litter picks, despite it being somewhat bittersweet. It's a great opportunity to come together and do some good for the environment, but it's sad that we have to do it in the first place. Still, it was good fun and the perfect excuse to ...

September 21st-22nd, my partner and I joined Shrewsbury Sub Aqua Club for a dive trip to Porth Ysgaden. Most folk went up on the Friday night and enjoyed an early Saturday dive. Between general exhaustion, work commitments, and life we chose to join them later. If we'd have traveled down on the Friday night we'd have got there gone midnight. Add in the 6am start, it was just a recipe for a bad dive. I have enough of those and feel like I have ruined plenty dives by crying. So we decided to join them for the Saturday afternoon dive and stay for one on Sunday. As per usual, best laid plans and whatnot, but more on that later. Saturday was beautiful for diving. The sea was calm, the sun was shining, and thanks to the autumnal breeze it was not too hot. Perfect conditions. The dive in the morning had been great by all accounts, there were even sightings of an octopus! Despite our sensible decision, I was a little jealous we missed it! Bay view at Porth Ysgaden The ...

HAPPY EARTH DAY! I hope your day was nice and Earthy yesterday. Myself, I organised a litter pick. My initial plan was to go to the beach, like last year. However, it was Bank Holiday Monday yesterday and travelling to the beach would have been hellish, let alone actually being there. So I shifted my focus to something a little more local. I am very lucky in that the Shropshire Union Canal runs along the edge of my town. It's a gorgeous area which I have walked and run many times. I have even braved cycling along it, constantly fearing falling in of course. As a lot of my family live locally, I put up an event on Facebook and left it open for them to join if they wanted. Everyone was eager join. And my step dad even volunteered their canoe and kayak! All in all, shaping up to be a good day. We met at the stretch of the canal behind the cricket club and used my parents' house as a base camp. Sun screen applied, hats and sunnies on, canoe and kayak prepped; we were r...

Imagine it. Tuesday afternoon, I have just finished my blog post about Angler Fish and my partner Chris comes upstairs to say he has a job. For those of you that don't know, he is a mobile bike mechanic for Shropshire and the surrounding areas. The job he got called in for on Tuesday was an interesting one, he told me. It was for a waterbike and the chap who was riding it was doing a canal litter pick for charity. I'm sure it'll be no surprise to hear that I had literal emoji heart eyes. Feeling like a proper journalist about to chase their scoop, this was a story I had to know more about! Thankfully, Chris let me tag along. The waterbike. Photo by RTR At Tylrey Locks we met Hughie, the young man with the waterbike. While Chris set about fixing it, Hughie told me a little about what he was doing and the charity he was volunteering for: an adventure collective called SayYesMore.com , founded by Dave Cornthwaite in 2012. SayYesMore encourage folk of all ages to d...