NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I cannot walk into a bookshop without heading straight to the 'natural history' department. This normally results in disappointment as the bookseller invariably stocks his/her shelves with a mixture of the banal  - 100 Penguins to see before you die - the twee - Lady Cattermole's Edwardian Ladies Country Diary - or the plain useless. Where have all the field guides gone? What about a few proper monographs? Atlas's? ANYTHING... I happened to be in Torquay at the weekend and there is some sort of sea safari park along the promenade. You can access the shop attached to it without needing to pay to look at penguins, so, under the vain hope that THERE WOULD BE BOOKS, I went in. And there were! I ended up buying the rather splendid Seaweeds of Britain and Ireland , a photographic guide that claims to be able to help you confidently identify over 200 species of them. As with most things, there are plenty that do need a microscope to clinch an identification, and I'...

What does a land-lubber of a pan-lister do when they visit the sea-side with their family? They run straight out to the tide line and rock pools and add seaweeds to their list. This Spiral Wrack was one of seven lifers that gave themselves up to the marauding marine field guide. Shiver me timbers!