Amongst the inanimate items like plastic crates, shoes, fishing nets and floats, washed ashore by storms during Christmas week at Rhossili, there were some more distressing casualties. Grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) love to swim and fish in the waters around the Gower Peninsula. I often catch tantalising glimpses of them in the water, diving around the kelp beds near Worms Head or upright in the water with just the head poking above the surface, eying me curiously as I watch them. However, in violent gale-driven seas, accidents can happen. Sometimes the seals are unable to get to the surface to breathe, sometimes they are dashed with force against the rocks. They drown.
In Christmas week I saw four dead Grey Seals washed up onto the strandline of Rhossili Beach. One was this freshly killed young individual (possibly still classifiable as a pup) – eyeless and bloody from scavenging birds. Another was a very large adult male more than two metres long. This had been dead a bit longer and starting to show signs of decomposition. Two others were also mature adults but in stages of advanced decomposition and obviously had been rolling too and fro for some time with the tides.
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Jessica's Nature Blog 
Poor things! Not exactly what you want to find during a stroll on the beach. I have yet to experience that pleasure…
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I hope that you and your young family do not encounter things like this. I would imagine that children might be distressed. However, I expect, on the relatively well-trodden paths of the south coast, this kind of evidence for sad events is rapidly tidied away by local authorities as a potential health hazard.
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