We happened to visit on one of the days when graduation was taking place which made for some nice people-watching.

The main draw of Bath, though, was its Roman Baths, built on what was an ancient shrine to the Goddess Sulis (hence Bath’s roman name of Aquæ Sulis).

The Weston-super-Mare SeaQuarium does manage to pack in quite a bit more than you expect from its apparent size from outside. One area where it is superior to a lot of other sealife exhibits we’ve seen is that it’s considerably brighter in a lot of places which aids in photography, always a tricky area when visiting these places as you have to ramp the ISO up massively high, often have to fight with the camera to hit the focus correctly, and have to accept lots of noise in the resulting pictures.

There had been nobody else in the SeaQuarium when we first arrived which wasn’t that surprising with it being a Tuesday at the end of October but we were pleased to see close to a dozen were present by the time we left. As expected, it wasn’t the most amazing aquarium we’ve visited but there was more than enough to see for anyone who likes these sorts of places.

As Halloween was upon us there was a section of the building given over to scary exhibits. My wife, suspecting (correctly) that such a place would contain a spider stayed away but I ventured inside the dark area. Some leaf insects were surprising additions as I don’t really consider them terrifying to anybody. A coiled, giant millipede was motionless, as was the anticipated tarantula at the back of its home. The clever area was a glass room next to which was a section you could enter and stick your head up into a perspex bowl to get up close with whatever was inside. I’ll admit that my heart was racing as my suspicion was that there would be more spiders and while I’m nowhere near as bad as my wife this wouldn’t be something I’d like to experience. The darkness in the room made it difficult to see anything which obviously sent the imagination into overdrive but once I’d actually spotted the terror I called my wife in for a look. Rats. We love rats. Adrenalin flowed away nicely. A nice little exhibit by Weston-super-Mare’s SeaQuarium.

Whereas we’d been in short sleeves for our trip down to Cornwall this was a day where we needed to wrap up warm as the wind coming in off the shore was bitterly cold. At one point we’d stopped for lunch in a pub and been seated by the door as it had been the only place available at the time; an icy blast every time someone came in or out ensured we wolfed everything down and were back out and walking in short order.

At one point on our walk we became aware of some shouting behind us. A woman with a dog had spotted my camera and wanted to know what lens I had on. I told her and she pointed out to the water which was approaching high tide at that point. In the distance there was something small and red floating and being carried out. “Can you take a look and see what it is?” she asked, explaining that she wanted to make sure it wasn’t a child. I explained I wouldn’t be able to tell with the camera lens I had as it was a wide angle with zoom to only 105mm.

“I’m a professional photographer!” she said. “Let me have a go!”

“I assure you that you won’t see anything. The water is grey. The sky is grey. The thing in the water is miles away and small and clearly inanimate. The sunlight is coming from behind the object so it will desaturate everything further. The zoom will not help. The screen will not magnify to a 1:1 ratio. It won’t show anything. I might get something from taking the photo off onto a computer and magnifying properly but that’s not going to happen any time soon.”

“If you give me the camera I can do it. I’m a professional photographer.”

“I’ll take the photo and zoom in… Look. You can’t tell.”

“Give me the camera. I’m a professional photographer.”

She reached for the camera and I slowly and very obviously grudgingly let her have it. She zoomed, took the photo, looked at the screen. “Oh,” she said, handing it back. “I usually have a telephoto lens when I’m out but I don’t today,” she added and I smiled and said I tend to only take whatever lens I think I’ll use for the day and this felt like a wide landscape day to me. My wife returned to my side from the position she’d taken up behind the woman in order to prevent her running off with the kit (we’re both usually very aware of our surroundings and people and always move and organise our things to reduce the risk of thefts, etc., although it probably wasn’t quite warranted on this occasion). The woman decided that the thing at sea probably wasn’t a person and walked along with us for a while telling us some of the history of the seaside resort before finally heading off with her dog.

“I’m very proud of you,” my wife told me, regarding how I’d handed my camera over to the woman and not told her to fuck off like my face apparently seemed to convey. I then ranted for several minutes about how a “professional photographer” should have more damn respect for other people and their equipment and how it was blindingly obvious to anyone from one look at the equipment I was carrying and my explanation about why the photo wouldn’t work that I was far from a rank amateur, not that that should matter one iota when it comes to demanding someone else’s possessions. “Just drop it!” I was then told so I shut up until now when I could rant some more. Oh, it feels good to vent.

And now for some more photos from along Weston-super-Mare’s seafront.

We’d checked the time for high tide to make sure we’d be on the Grand Pier when the water was actually in as the previous time we’d visited Weston-super-Mare back in 2013 it had resulted in us not seeing the water once and only arguing whether the bright flashes on the horizon were reflections on the distant sea or simply mirages. We can at least confirm now that it is possible on occasion to swim when visiting Weston-super-Mare’s seafront.

Back in 2013 we headed to this spot on the west coast of England to use it as a base for exploring the surrounding area. A seaside location that we could come back to at the end of each day and enjoy some sea air walks, perhaps some tacky pier-end entertainments, and a pub or two absolutely suited the way we liked to have breaks.

We booked into the Beachlands Hotel at the time, it being close enough to walk into the main part of the town but not right in the middle of it, and having car parking too. The bonus was a swimming pool that we enjoyed using. One of our fondest memories of this hotel, though, was splashing out on an evening meal there one night and being seated outside the dining room ahead of our table being ready then being offered canapés. The canapés were thick slices of cucumber with a dollop of cream cheese on the top and they amused us immensely. We often talk about them now.

Anyway, after our drive up from Portsmouth and checking in, unpacking, and freshening up, we went for a walk down to Weston-super-Mare seafront and if it’s photographic evidence of this you’re after then you’ve come to the right place.

The beach at Weston-super-Mare has a lot of sand but depending on the time of day that you visit not much in the way of water. The bits that sort of look like water in the photos here are generally just wet sand reflecting the light from the sky. Weston-super-Mare actually has the second largest tidal range in the world with the difference between low and high tides over one and a half kilometres.

On a later visit to this part of the world in 2017 we would actually see the sea during another walk along Weston-super-Mare seafront.

The “Super Mare” part of the town’s name comes from Latin but it’s not “extraordinary lady horse” if that’s what you’re thinking while I’ve conveniently placed this paragraph just above photos of some equine animals on the beach. These are donkeys, silly, and while I’m not a fan of having working animals and would certainly never ride one they did seem to be looked after fairly well and were in decent spirits as far as my reading of donkey facial expressions go. “Super Mare” means “on the sea” and suggests that the town was named at high tide otherwise the commonly-used term of “Western-super-Mud” might have come into use a lot earlier instead.

We reached the Grand Pier and we felt compelled to walk down and around it. Should you ever need to slow us down if we’re pursuing you then you could do a lot worse than construct a few piers in our way and we’ll be sure to check them out.

The pavilion on the pier in the photo below is the third such one as it won’t surprise you to learn that since its original construction in 1904 there have been a few fires that have required substantial repairs. Our travelling experiences and visits to historical buildings suggest piers almost love catching fire as much as churches do.

We don’t talk about the kinky hot dog figure on Weston-super-Mare’s Grand Pier.

That brought our walk along the seafront at Weston-super-Mare to an end for this first night of our 2013 visit to the West Country. All that remained was to wander into town and find a pub or two to drink in. With this being pre-2016 there’s a good chance this would have been a Wetherspoons pub. We, like all good and decent people, don’t frequent their small-minded establishments any longer.