I was in La Herradura yesterday morning and observed a line, a couple of hundred metres long, of cream-coloured scum. I'm colour blind, mind...

My immediate thoughts were that it was something nasty, so I went to speak with a family on the beach. The mother was taking a video of the kids in the surf – the line of flotsam was further out, near the mooring buoys, more or less in front of El Chiringuito El Rebelaje.

The mother had not even noticed it but said that her husband had been most of the morning on the beach, he could tell me how long it had been there.

He came out of the water to speak to me – I was fully dressed in jeans and boots, so I wasn’t going to wade out. He said that he had been on the beach for a few hours and that the line of floatsam had been there at least during that time.

Fortunately, the reason that I was in the village was to meet up with my good friend, Juan Manuel de Haro who is a journalist for the Ideal. I pointed out the advancing line and he gave me an explanation as to what it was and where it came from.

Apparently, during the summer, brine and other substances build up on the rocks so that when the summer is drawing to a close and strong winds start wiping up waves, it literally washes the rocks clean of the build up on their surface; hence the long stream of coloured foam. He also said that it usually breaks up and disappears rather than washes up on the beach.

Juan Manuel is my oracle as he has been a local reporter since 1981; the year I arrived to live in Spain.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Tags: Herradura Bay, Floatsam, Stain, Washed off Rocks, Natural Origin, Harmless