Oen thing I loved doing as a child was to go out at low tide, usually with my Grandpa and sometimes my Dad to gather shellfish. Back then, you just had to dig under the sand a little and you would find heaps and heaps of pipis. So many lovely hours spent at the beach and trudging back to the car with our easily-won food in buckets. I actually don't like shellfish myself, but I loved gathering it. Grandpa would rinse the sand off and then straight into a big pot with them all, though sometimes the adults would eat them raw. These days, there are limits to what you can take as they have become a lot scarcer.
I'm glad you finally got one. Around that age I started only using mine to build dioramas.
