White-pebble Bay HDR

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Large is much finer, not just because it makes the barnacles in the foreground clearer...

I spent the weekend in north Devon visiting a great friend; I had a splendid time! The weather was not at all wonderful, but we had such fun: when I arrived we went for a walk, and ended up scrambling along an stream in a forest overgrown with ferns, mosses, lichens, &c. One side of the stream was typical beech forest, the other was (previously managed) conifer forest, which created a very strange environment with the two sides having very different atmospheres.

I took this picture when, yesterday, we went on a fern-hunting trip: my favourite genus of ferns is Adiantum (maiden-hair ferns), and my friend's father (a botanist) immediately looked it up when I mentioned it, and found a reference to a (locally) rare Adiantum species that had been found on the north coast of Devon in the early 19th Century. SO, off we went on a fern-hunting expedition: a trip to see whether that fern (or one of its descendants) was still there!
We explored the coast and bays in the area where the fern had been spotted, but, alas, were unable to locate it ourselves. The tide was high which prevented us from visiting a few promising-looking coves (one of which had a stream flowing into it, which would have created perfect Adiantum habitat). We will revisit at low tide the next time I visit! The bays are all just west of the wonderfully named Ilfracombe.
What fun; it felt like an old-fashioned adventure (a mission to give a lonely fern some company).

This is a photo of the first promising bay that we reached (facing away from the fern habitat...): from up high, the water looks very pale near these particular bays because of a pale vein of rock which gave rise to the white pebbles that cover White-pebble Bay.