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Whales and elephant seals glide through the shimmering water, while bears and mountain lions patrol the misty headlands.

A lover of the outdoors, Mr Batcock had asked his family to put the bench up on headland at Bull Bay on Anglesey.

The headlands site, Point Molate, a former World War II Navy fuel depot largely reclaimed by nature since its closure in 1995, lies just north of the Richmond Bridge.

The inexorable wonder-workings of geology — with a fanciful nod to Poseidon, the god of earthquakes and oceans — created that stunning headland that juts its chin out into the Pacific from Los Angeles County.

It was not long before a familiar black shape edged around the headland towards the beach we had chosen as a likely place for boats to launch.