One of best years for ages – ormering enthusiast deputy
THIS year’s ormering season has been one of the best for many years.
The season draws to a close today, with a 1.0m tide just after 3pm.
Deputy Lyndon Trott, a very keen ormering enthusiast, said that there had been plenty of good days to collect a good feed over the past eight tides.
He always aims to get out on at least one day of every three-day tide.
‘It’s fair to say this season has been one of the best I can remember, and I’ve been ormering since I was a boy,’ he said.
‘There was one day particularly, of a really low tide, perfect weather and high pressure. You don’t often get days like that, and I collected more than 100 ormers.’
They were shared, in batches of six, between family and friends, including many islanders who used to be keen ormerers who are no longer able to scramble the rocks, he said.
Yesterday had a 0.7m tide, but there were not many ormerers out. Deputy Trott said he went on Thursday.
‘I decided to go to Lihou Island, and there were just four other people out there. On the first tide of the year, in the same place, there were probably more than 100. It was quite slim pickings this week. I worked really hard and got 19.’
Yesterday, off La Croix Martin, friends Dave Roussel and Colin Gontier had collected nine ormers between them. Mr Gontier now lives in Plymouth, but returned to the island for the last tide of the year.
‘Beautiful conditions today and a good tide,’ they said.
Islanders are permitted to collect ormers on the days of the full moon, new moon and the two days following between 1 January and 30 April.
