I was walking on the beach before 7am this mornning,  and so absorbed in the opening installment of “Island Beneath The Sea”  by Isabel Allende that I almost stepped on this tiny little offering; the smallest, simplest one I have ever noticed.  it was definitely an offering, as the candles were clearly pressed down into the wet sand as the water receded.  Yes, I know you can’t see two, but indeed there were, one slightly shorter and directly behind the other – duh – how could I take such a photo ?  Answer – I was absorbed in my book.  As they’ll be gone now, you’ll just have to take my word for it that there were two.

The wind was blowing rolls of foam in from an unusual direction, and the dog watched these very nervously as they slowly and majestically glided along in the final shallows before coming to rest on the sand.   I haven’t seen them like that before.  Couldn’t get a good snap of her wary nervousness which was rather funny – and as the tide receeded they left these interesting linear patterns I haven’t seen before, either:

When I first noticed these markings I thought that in the 3 weeks I’d been away some newly appeared creature must have begun being busy on the beach –  then realised it was foam which had gradually lost all the air bubbles and left these lovely patterns in linear groups down the beach behind the receeding water.  3-4 weeks is a long time in the  cycle of creatures and of the beach profile itself.  Today there were a couple of 5-7cm jellyfish on the sand – it’s only a month or 5 weeks since I blogged of seeing little 1-2cm sized ones.