Ssh, these beaches are a secret . . .
Nothing beats a British beach break — but finding a quiet patch is hard this summer. So here’s our pick of the best, lesser-known sandy spots
We can get quite defensive about our favourite beach. each of us has our own particular image of what a beach should be like — often derived from the one we used to visit as children.
Was it a north cornish beach with crashing atlantic surf, or a gentler south cornish cove, a vast stretch of norfolk coast, or a pebbly Kentish beach, a bracing Scottish shoreline, or an entertainment-filled Blackpool one?
We don’t like it when other people dare to criticise ‘our’ kind of beach or suggest that ‘their’ one further down the coast is better.
after months of lockdown, most of us are desperate to go back to the coast and breathe in lungfuls of healthy British sea air. The covid-19 epidemic has taught us to appreciate the beauty of our own country. Many of us will decide it’s safest to stay in the UK this summer and rediscover our love of beaches in all their mad variety.
none of us lives far from the coast; the most inland village in Britain, according to Ordnance Survey, is coton in the elms in Derbyshire, only 70 miles from the sea.
We’re aching for that sublime moment of arrival at our beloved place, when the shoes start filling with dry sand and become ridiculously unwearable, and you take them off and feel your bare feet sink into the water for the first tingling touch.
We like to ‘know the ropes’ when we travel, hence our propensity to go back to the same beach year after year. and not only that but to go back to the same spot on the beach we’ve been going to for 40 or more years, and where our parents or grandparents went before us.
Our list today of lesser-known beaches might jolt us out of this repeat habit and remind us not to get too set in our ways. Or it could be the start of a tradition that will descend through generations.
You’ll need some strong members of the party because some of these beaches
are a brisk short walk from the car and it’s no good arriving with nothing but a towel. We like our comforts. No beach day is complete without a Thermos flask and a tin of chocolate digestives to hand round.
i used to turn my nose up at folding chairs — now i’m a convert. They have so many uses: for a snooze, to hang clothes from and dry towels on, cup-holder, and shade-provider for the dog, whose territorial urges kick in the second you plonk down a chair.
so down to this delightful place you’ll go, carrying a chair each, surfboards, cricket bats, balls, buckets and spades, picnic, rug, hats, suncream, books, change of trousers for the stubborn person who will ‘just go for a paddle’ and get soaked. And only when you get there, will you discover whether it fulfils your own microrequirements: does it have the right amount of shade; does it have sand hard and flat enough for a game of cricket, and of the perfect consistency for a moated sandcastle? is there somewhere to shelter if it rains? is there any phone signal?
And are there enough pebbles to throw but not so many that it makes walking down to the sea in bare feet torture? Only by sampling these places for the first time will you begin to start perfecting the experience and making the beach ‘yours’.