What You Might See From the House
A common dolphin off Tenby, Carmarthen Bay
The sea at Waterwynch is not just a view. On a good day, or sometimes on a completely ordinary one, it moves.
Dolphins are not uncommon in Carmarthen Bay. Common dolphins and bottlenose dolphins both pass through these waters, and if you are sitting on the lawn or standing at a sea-facing window at the right moment, you may see them working along the bay below. It tends to happen without announcement: a dark shape, a brief arc, then another, and suddenly everyone in the room is at the window.
Whales are rarer but not unknown. Minke whales are recorded in Welsh coastal waters with some regularity, and there have been humpback sightings further along the coast. The scale of what you are looking at only becomes clear slowly. What seems at first like a distant disturbance in the water resolves, if you watch long enough, into something considerably larger than you expected.
And then there is Wally.
Wally, resting on a slipway at Tenby, spring 2021.
In the spring of 2021, a young walrus appeared on the beaches and harbour walls of western Europe, having somehow travelled far south of his Arctic range. He was spotted in Ireland, in France, in Spain. He rested on boats. He made the news. And one morning he was seen from Waterwynch, in the bay below the house, as improbable a sight as this coastline has ever produced.
Wally eventually made his way back north. But the bay has not quite looked the same since. You find yourself scanning the water a little more carefully, staying at the window a little longer, wondering what else might be passing through.
Not every encounter with the bay is dramatic in the same way. Last year a dolphin came ashore on the beach below the house, drawing a quiet gathering before the tide eventually carried it back out to sea. There was something oddly affecting about it, and about how quickly the water reclaimed the scene.
That is the thing about the sea here. It keeps its own counsel, and occasionally it surprises you.