Mudeford Quay

This is Mudeford Quay near Christchurch in Dorset. When I was a little boy I used to holiday here with my parents and younger brother. At that time Mudeford was in Hampshire. Mudeford didn’t move but they changed the county boundaries.

We used to walk to the quay in the evenings and my brother and I would fish for crabs over the edge. At that time there were no railings there. We would get some limpets off the rocks on the way there to use as bait. We used to catch some crabs but they were only small, not edible. We would put them in water in a plastic bucket with the bait then throw them back in before we left.

Perhaps in retrospect we might have caught the same crabs every evening. They may have thought they were on to a good thing. Being hauled out of the water might not have been so much of a price to pay if they got a free feed?