Newquay Harbour Wildlife

Sunday 4 August 1996. It's lunchtime and it's taken all morning to get from Porth to the centre of Newquay.

We've managed to leave the shops and we've reached the beach at Towan Beach, noteable for the island which has an art galllery on it. I've only just climbed down the cliff, I'm not climbing back up it!

But the family are quite happy to sit on the beach or go splash in the sea. I go for a look at the harbour which is just the other side of the road down which we've just walked.

There are no large ships here, just fishing boats and small rowing boats used to get to the larger boats that are moored too far from a wall to jump or climb onto. There's not much in the way of pleasure trips in evidence here, you can hire a boat to go fishing, but the harbour does have some boats that go out with tourists. They must have all been out, or perhaps the owners had realised it was lunchtime and had stopped operations. There are even trips to go looking for marine life. Newquay is visited by the odd dolphin or even huge basking sharks or sunfish at times.

You may even find the odd bit of wildlife following the fishing boats back into the harbour, hoping for a few escapees! A seal was swimming about in the hope of one of the returning fishing boats dropping something overboard! One or two people were paddling or swimming (in the oily waters of the harbour when there are beautiful beaches literally 50 yards away!) and there were several screams as the seal surfaced near to them.

A sign was warning that seals are wild animals and shouldn't be approached, though why anyone would want to paddle or swim in the oily waters of a fishing harbour is beyond me anyway. The harbour has much significance for Newquay - in fact the town was called Towan Blystra until the new quay was built in the 15th century. It's a little uncertain that the name changed as early as that. Newquay doesn't appear in written records as a place name until the 17th century.

A fishing boat returns and the chap aboard proceeds to chop up mackarel onboard with a machete. He tossed the fish tails into the water, but the seal was obviously of the more discerning type!

The afternoon wore on, tea time approached but inexplicably the rest of the family decided to head back to the B+B, away from all the cafes and restaurants, meaning we had to take to the cars and drive round looking for somewhere to eat. No pubs seemed to open for food until later and it was with relief that we found a pub around 7:00pm and some 30 miles away that wasn't fully booked already.

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