Winter Field Trips: Helen's Bay and Crawfordsburn Country Park

One afternoon in January when it looked like it wouldn’t be raining and Reed deserved an outing, I let him show me the way to the park and beach where he and Papa had been together a few times without me. You can walk along the coastal path to get to Crawfordsburn Country Park and Helen’s Bay if you like (it takes about 45 minutes from our house) or you can get on the train and get off at Helen’s Bay station and walk down the residential road to the beach and get the coastal path there. That is what Reed and I did.

The tide was about halfway up so the beach was a long narrow strip of grayish yellow sand, marked by a human tracks walking in a straight line and dog tracks meandering joyfully all over the place. The seaweed lay in piles all along the beach at the high tide line, like a scruffy bathtub ring. Reed played on the edges of the emptying creek where it was carving its path through the sand to the open water, and then he took me on the path along the beach, over the rise, and up into the woods to find the Crawfordsburn Park visitor center where we had a scone and a sausage roll and learned about the wildlife in the park and the 3 different hiking trails to choose from: woodland, coastal, or meadow. There were a few people here and there but in so much space you still feel as if you've got it all to yourself.

We headed back down to another stretch of beach next to where the river empties out, where there was the biggest tide pool we’d ever seen – at least 20 yards by 10, and just a few inches deep. Reed gathered rocks to make himself a rock pathway across one of the narrower parts and we made our way slowly back along the long expanse of sand to where we started, where we found an alternative path back to the Helen’s Bay station, on a graveled path through the woods. We passed under the tracks through a cavernous, mossy arched tunnel – filled with the sound of dripping water - before doubling back and up onto the platform. Reed’s feet were soaked and his socks full of sand when we arrived home, obviously a really good day.