Creative Caravaning – by Sheila

One of the things I like doing best is making something out of nothing, or at least nothing much.  I like collecting things on the beach and working out what can be made of them.  The beach near my caravan is well endowed with stones with holes right through them.  It is very satisfying to collect a few such stones and some bits of fishing net and tie them all together to make paper weights, for use on the garden table when reading newspapers.

I have also collected sea glass on the beach.  Sea glass is glass that has spent years – I think – in the sea getting buffeted about, so that all the sharp edges have been rubbed away, and you are left with a coloured nicely smooth edged stone-like object.  I have made necklaces and ear rings with sea glass and distributed them to everyone who will have them!

Last summer, my friend Mary and I got the idea of making pictures from found objects on the beach.  We had fun with that, and when my sister arrived to stay with her eleven year old twin grandsons a few weeks later, the boys embraced the idea, making a great three dimensional representation of a wrecked yacht, which they entitled “Seen Better Days”.

Whilst they were still in the caravan, Jae, Oscar and his brothers also arrived to stay.  Happily my friend Caroline agreed to lend us her caravan too for the weekend, as eight people in one caravan doesn’t work too well.  The five boys had the best of times, and we grownups had a great fun too.  My sister had got the idea of making decorated lanterns out of jam jars, and the boys had great, creative ideas for interesting designs.   It is a real joy to get children involved in anything of that sort.  I have a happy memory of sitting outside on a couple of warm evenings, lit up by homemade lanterns, chatting with my sister and Jae and others passing by, while the five boys were in the caravan, which Jae had ingeniously turned into a cinema for the evening.  She put all the cushions together to make a big bank of them for the boys to lie on, while they watched the latest DVD release and munched on popcorn.

It is possible to eat off the beach too.  Jae’s husband, David, has collected mussels with the boys at low tide and he and the two younger boys – Oscar is a veggie like Jae – have eaten them without any ill effects.  In April and May a form of green broccoli can be collected, which is quite delicious after a quick boil with a dash of butter  and sea kale, which is very like spinach, can be collected during three or four months in spring/summer.

I generally collect bits and pieces – most often stones – wherever I go.  I have some beautiful white stones garnered off a Spanish beach, fossils from the beach near Lyme Regis, pieces of stone which seem to be made of shells collected on a hillside above Agadir and, of course, the bit of lava picked up on Vesuvius in 1972.  I wonder what I might find on Kilimanjaro.  The mountain is a National Park, so it may be that it is an offence to remove anything: no doubt I will find out.  I will be on the look out for anything interesting and particularly anything that can be fashioned into something useful or decorative, if it is allowed.