Right beside the seaside

You don’t have to go far to enjoy sand as far as the eye can see

THE Sun IS setting over Camber Sands, famous for its vast skies, long, wide golden beach, and grass-fringed dunes that are softer under foot than a goosedown duvet. Like everyone else, my sixyear-old and I, ruddy cheeked from a day of spring sun, are gathering up our bucket sand spades to head home. unlike everyone else, home for us is a 30-second scamper away in a pretty white beach house on the sand. It’s so ‘on the sand’ that when you arrive, you actually have to walk along the beach from the car park to get to it. It’s just one step upon to the deck, where a fire crackles in the great metal barbecue pit in readiness for steaks, our friends are sipping white wine and my husband is playing the guitar.

Barefoot Beach House is a real home, which means as well as the guitar, it comes with books, board games, toys, fishing nets and framed family photos. But it’s also spotlessly clean, beautifully furnished in a lantern-lit new England style and feels a complete treat to be in. The house has three bedrooms: there are two doubles down stairs, while upstairs is an open-plan mezzanine floor with a four-poster bed facing the sea at one end and, at the other, partitioned off by curtains, a couple of single beds for children. A sizeable groundfloor space houses a large kitchen that’s well equipped and fun to cook in, a long di ni ng t able a nd a liv i ng a rea wit h comfy sofas and armchairs arranged around a wood-burning stove.

Pa r t of t he j oy of s t ay i ng her e, t hough, is t he quirk of t he locat ion. Home to a Pontins holiday park, Camber Sands really does feel like a faded seaside town. Yet the area’s extraordinary natural beauty means it has also long attracted writers, such as Henry James and E F Benson, who lived here. In the village is Gallivant, a restaurant with rooms, offering award-winning locally sourced food, quality fish and chips and a great wine list. Four miles inland are the cobbled streets, antique shops, delis, butchers and bakers of the medieval hillside town of Rye. Even Derek Jarman’s hauntingly beautiful garden on the shingle beach at Dungeness is just a 20-minute drive away.

WINDY RIDGE, SHINGLE STREET, SUFFOLK

For a windswept slice of Suffolk coast, t hi s for mer f i sher man’s cot t age on Shingle Street near Woodbridge sleeps five people in three bedrooms and sits right next to the beach. All on one level, with the exception of a cosy little lookout tower for child ren reached v ia a ladder, there is one double and one single bedroom in the main house, and the master bedroom – with its own woodburning stove – in an annexe across the garden. It’s all set within mature gardens, which also include a pat io and a lawned area.