Weedy Sea Dragon
Over the last few years, the destination of our holidays has been based on the availability and quality of the underwater diving.
Since I no longer dive, it’s irrelevant to me what might be found under the water. Several years ago, I hung up my fins for good when I discovered that I became sick whilst diving and in fact, I’m even sick when I go snorkelling.
But I’m not moaning! I’ve been to some wonderful places which I might otherwise never have seen, for example Jordan, North Sulawesi, Tasmania – to name a few. Places which are not usually well known tourist destinations but all places that I’ve loved. While Jamie explores underwater, I explore on land.
Jamie wanted to go to Tasmania to find the Weedy Sea Dragon and thankfully, after going half way round the world he did find one which he was able to photograph to prove he’d seen it. I took the photo of the Weedy Sea Dragon on the left, in an aquarium in Singapore, just in case when we finally arrived in Tasmania Jamie didn’t spot one. Not that my photo would have been much consolation to him if he hadn’t been lucky enough to see one but at least we’d have had a record.
I loved Tasmania. It looked to me, like England might have looked many years ago, with sleepy villages and open countryside. I was amazed by the similarity of many of the houses to photos of houses I’ve seen which used to make up Plotlands in Laindon, Essex. One of the very few Plotlands houses that remain is The Haven which is now a museum, although you can still stroll through the woods and find concrete paths, which once lined the avenues of Plotlands. There are plenty of people who still remember the Plotlands in their heyday and you can read more about Laindon and its history, here.
House in Tasmania
The Haven, a Plotland house and now a museum
Jamie and I moved to Langdon Hills, Essex in 1982 and at that time, there was still the ruins of a cottage in the woods which had once been part of a Plotland road.
The history of Plotlands and in fact, Laindon and Langdon Hills is fascinating and you can find more out here.
My ebook ‘Daffodil and the Thin Place’ is set in Laindon in both the present day and the late 1800s and includes some of the people who really were associated with the parish church, St. Nicholas Laindon with Dunton. If you’d like to read about them, you can buy the ebook here on the Muse It Up Publishing website. #MuseItUp #DaffodilAndTheThinPlace