The day after Boxing day saw us heading out to Horsey following a chance remark made by Graham; an old friend and fellow elderly hippy rocker. Graham lives in Winterton and mentioned that recently he had been walking his dog the two miles or so to Horsey to see the seal pups that are born between December and January. This sounded like a good post-Christmas blowout mission so we set off to find seals.
We did indeed find the seals and their pups along with several hundred other seal watchers. Poppylands the cafe cum art gallery which is situated nearly had set up a food and coffee stall and also provided a seal shuttle bus for those that felt unable to brave the walk along the dunes.
I’m not a huge fan of nature on the whole but this was good. The adult seals were surprisingly large and were (I’m sure there must be a proper word for it) flolloping along the beach using their enormously powerful forelimbs. The pups that we saw on the beach were downy white with velvety fur and seemed to enjoy the attention – indeed many seemed to be playing to the audience.
I understand that elsewhere in the world these animals are regarded as pests that decrease fishing stocks and as a result the pups are culled – which somehow sounds slightly less emotive than ‘killed’. Given the heartwarming sights we were privileged to see today you would have to be very hard hearted indeed to raise a club with the intention of dashing out the brains of these baby animals.
