Call me a Covidiot, but my day at the beach was the thrill of my life

Iwent to the beach this week. Call me a Covidiot, but I had to check it was still there. I knew, of course, that it was – I only had to glance at pictures of people crammed on to the sand at Southend-on-sea – but I needed to see it for myself, to check that the existence of the rest of the world wasn’t some massive conspiracy and that there was life outside the tiny bit of south London we call home, the tiny bit we haven’t ventured out of, for over two months.

There’s not much scenery around our way: just bricks and mortar and pavement and road. If I see something green, the chances are it is a weed, or a crisp packet, or a discarded beer bottle. I cannot be the only city dweller who has wondered, over the last 60 days, why on earth they chose to live in an overpriced shoebox with close to no outside space, instead of out in the countryside, where there is room to breathe and listen. Still, now is not the time to be making major life decisions; it is a time to whinge about the ones we have made in the past. And so it was that, after eight weeks of me complaining about living in London, my husband finally snapped.

“Let’s leave London for the day then,” he said. “If it shuts you up, let’s just get out of here for a few hours.”

“But we CAN’T!” I wailed. “We will be arrested and shamed! We are not allowed to leave London!”

“Actually, that’s not true. As residents of England, we are allowed to travel as far as we want within the country for our daily exercise, as long as we don’t stay, and make sure to return to our houses by nightfall.”

“We are living in a dystopian nightmare,” I wept.

“That’s true. But I see nothing in the documentation that says we aren’t allowed to have a picnic and a sea swim in this dystopian nightmare.”

So, as the mercury rose outside, we researched beaches within two hours of us, that wouldn’t be too busy.

We discovered that many beaches have live webcams, which allowed us to see how packed they got on a hot day. For several hours, I switched between webcams, like a demented spy, until I found an area in Dorset that did not seem overly populated with Covidiots such as myself. The next day, we set our alarms for 6am, packed a picnic, blanket, and bucket and spade, and headed off for what would be the most thrilling day of our lives.

When we hit the motorway, my daughter let out a gasp. “It’s just so beautiful!” she said, admiring the expanse of empty road ahead of her, the fascinating signs for far-flung, exotic places, such as Heston services, Heathrow, and the M25. At Fleet, one of the last services before leaving the motorway and entering the New Forest, we stopped to use the facilities. I had never been so happy to use a service station loo.

Entering the New Forest, I began to cry, if only because we had done the journey in recordbreaking time due to the lack of traffic on the roads. Driving out, and approaching the beach, I spotted a giant flashing sign that warned us to “GO HOME” and “SAVE LIVES”. It told us that the beach was “TOO BUSY”. I felt my heart plummet. But when we arrived at the car park, there were only three other vehicles there, and a couple of people walking their dogs.

The beach was almost empty, just a couple of families exploring the surf. We dragged our things down to the sea, and walked as far up it as we could, to ensure proper social distance of at least 200 metres, or was it two miles? We set out our blanket and sat on the cold sand and we stared in silence. We stared at the sea, that was still there, and the horizon, that was still there, and at the smiling dog walkers who trundled past and waved at us. They, too, were still there, and they didn’t want to drive us out with pitchforks. Like us, they just wanted to have a nice, sensible time by the sea.

We played games, built sand castles, and not once came within two metres of anyone outside our household. On the way home, I realised two things: that I felt really, really normal, and that this was the first time I had felt really, really normal for over two months. In the terror of this pandemic, I think we have forgotten that we are allowed to try to be happy, that we haven’t been banned from fun.

There has been such judgment about people, that at times the easiest option has just been to suffer, as if feeling anything other than fear or misery is somehow insulting to the people who have been taken by this awful disease. But this bank holiday, I hope everyone will try to do just one thing that pleases them, just one thing that makes them happy (as long as it is within the rules). We must do what we can to keep going. We must remember that there is no law against searching for hope.

I realised that this was the first time I had felt really, really normal for over two months