The weather right now is perfect for outside living. Sandstorms have disappeared for the moment and we make the most of clear skies and balmy evenings. The Tribe take to snorkelling like fish to water and at ‘our beach’, there is a breakwater of rocks that makes for easy and safe snorkelling close to shore. We have even found a fantastic small circular device with a clear perspex bottom and inflatable sides for the littlest to use to watch life below the sea’s surface. We make the most of this brief quiet time at weekends as the mayhem of the sporting schedule ramps up.

With cross country and athletics tournaments, netball and tag rugby matches at fixtures across Dubai, we all begin to feel a little ragged so a decision is made to do a quick dash to Dibba in Oman (just 1 1/2 hours drive away) for a brief camping expedition. Just to recharge the batteries. This time we find 3 other groups camping on the beach but we manage to get what we see as the ‘top spot’ at the end of the beach where the Hajar mountains meet the sand and Gulf of Oman. Walking on the sand we find a huge number of False Venus Combs (which the Tribe have now given the rather apt nickname ‘spinasaurus’) of varying size. The spiny ‘tail’, of this predatory sea snail, appears to stick out of the sand as the tide goes out and I warn the Tribe to take care as they run across the sands. Fortunately no

one is hurt during our outing although I do manage to stand on the empty shell of one whilst wearing a flip flop – the ‘spines’ are deeply embedded in the sole and it takes some effort to pull it out. I’m glad that I wasn’t bare foot. The

beautiful empty shells are collected and left in a pile next to our camp. We also find lots of sea urchins on the rocks in the shallows – one of their favourite habitats. During the day urchins don’t do very much; it is at night that they feed on floating food particles and algae.

The Tribe know to stay away from the shiny black spines – back at our beach in Dubai there are some sea urchins with spines about 4-6″ long. A rather bizarre addition to our beach combing finds are a lot of dead black fish with 2 prominent sharp red teeth on the upper and lower mouth, missing their eyes (I imagine the birds go for these) measuring about 10″ long. Looking at one

of these fish I realise that the whole body is gently writhing. On closer inspection I can see that there are dozens of tiny, colourful hermit crabs eating their way through the fish. This does rather make my skin crawl!

The shells of the hermit crabs are astonishing though; they are a myriad of pretty pastel colours which I have never seen before on hermit crab shells. The Tribe amuse themselves by putting a number of crabs of varying sizes in a bucket and then tip them out to see which one wins the race to the sea. Fingers are kept well out of the way this time. During the night we hear cats fighting on the beach and the wind picks up. Packing up the following day, we give our gazebo a ‘burial’ in the bin on the beach. Despite the loss of a gazebo it has been the perfect antithesis to life in Dubai and we return with batteries thoroughly recharged.

The sport schedule builds up to the British Schools in the Middle East Games towards the end of the month and we enjoy a packed  weekend with the eldest of the Tribe competing in athletics, basketball and netball.

With 1st, 2nd and 1st places in her competitions she helps the squad to overall victory and we are obviously very proud and it is a fitting tribute to our departing PE coach.

This last year of primary school seems to be disappearing all too quickly. Now she just has the school play rehearsals to contend with.

As the term comes to an end we have a brief flurry of tournaments, my parents arrive and on the final day of term the school celebrates the end of book month (I think our household thought it was sports month), with the children dressing up as a book character.

I walk into school with Alex Rider, Scheherazade from 1001 Nights (an outfit that I wore as Scheherazade in Aladdin in the Henley Children’s Theatre Group a long, long time ago!) and Chicken Licken (using a rather fabulous outfit previously made for an Abbotts Ann Primary School Nativity). Chicken Licken wins the competition! We are all quite exhausted by the end of the day although Father of the Tribe and I still have a car to pack up with camping gear. We have decided to return to As Sifah in Oman.

As Sifah is as serene as we remembered it to be and on the first evening, an hour or so after the Tribe are asleep, we are rewarded for the efforts of a 9 hour drive, by the stunning sight of a full moon rising out of the sea on the horizon and bathing the beach in a silvery light. I have never seen this before and feel privileged to have seen it. There is no need for the Tribe’s night lights during this camping trip as, for our entire stay, the moon emits a vast amount of light that reflects off the white sand.

As day dawns and we take in our surroundings, we realise that the topography of the beach has completely changed from the last time we were here. There had been a shelf of just under half a metre, that ran some distance along the beach and where the rocks started at the end of the beach, there was one rock that the Tribe could jump off safely into the sea as the tide came in. This rock is now almost completely covered in sand.

We assume that there must have been a big storm to create the surge of water needed to change the contours of the beach as much as this.

We are still able to walk around to the other cove at low tide, but the ‘dead body’ carpet roll has disappeared completely and the cove is now just inhabited by hundreds of crabs of all sizes. Every time she sees a crab, the littlest is delighted and shrieks with glee, pointing and screaming “Rab! Rab!” With the sea crystal clear and warm the Tribe enjoy snorkelling. A herd of goats walk past the back of our camp every morning and make their way up a well worn goat path that runs up the rocky hillside behind us.

One morning a local fisherman is up earlier than us before sunrise, and we find him around what we’ve nicknamed ‘Crab Alley’, at the far point, fishing off the rocks with only a line. He is in silhouette against the quickly lightening sky and as he casts his line out to the deep, it is an evocative sight that probably hasn’t changed for centuries.

Easter Sunday is somewhat different this year and we miss the service at St Mary’s, but we do have hot cross buns for breakfast and later on when our part of the beach starts falling into the shadow of the mountains, the Tribe do have an Easter egg hunt. I have brought plastic egg shells from home and fill them with sugar coated chocolate eggs – remarkably these survive

the heat rather well. Signs, arrows and a few tiny yellow chicks scatter across the beach and point the Tribe to their sweet bounty. As the sun dips lower in the sky, the Tribe are wiped clean of both sand and chocolate before falling into a happy, deep slumber.

Mother of the ‘tired, chocolatey and sandy’ Tribe