In Welsh it is Môr Hafren, but old salts from England are very proprietorial and insist we call it the Bristol Channel. When we were kids, of course, it was just the sea. We bathed in it, and played on its shore. Across it came our weather. Down it our fathers and grandfathers had sent coal from the Ebbw, Rhymney and Rhondda valleys in startling quantities to power and heat the world. But, before the age of coal, our sea shaped people’s lives by turns dramatically and quietly. Tricky for Mary and Thomas, the sea.
You can listen to their story - Was There a Mermaid? - along with five others from Cabot Cruising Club’s Lightship Arts Festival on 19 March, when A Word in Your Ear presented, .
How did it go? Well enough to have some people offering their theories about what really happened, and others sharing their experience of sailing the same stretch of the Channel as the Ogmore Mermaid.