We’ve Been to the Beach!

Well it was a fine day and we don’t get too many of these when the tide is right for a beach visit.

It was my husband’s day off and he’s been talking about taking our grandchildren fishing on the rocks off the beach where he grew up. Until we were married he lived in a Northumberland coastal village called Seaton Sluice. It has a small very old harbour and an enormous beach with beautiful golden sands.

It’s only about a half hour drive but it was about 10 degrees cooler and much windier at the beach than it was at home.



Still they enjoyed it but it wasn’t long before we headed off for lunch. Humungous plates of fish and chips! What else?

After that we headed for the beach proper where Lauren wanted to build sandcastles. Well as a child who had built more sandcastles than these two have had hot dinners I gave them the benefit of my extensive sandcastle expertise and advised them that you can’t build a sandcastle with a moat on dry sand. They would need to build it on the wet sand nearer the sea. Well an hour later after lugging water from the sea up to the dry sand and finding it just drained away, the penny dropped and they gave up! Don’t children ever listen? No, because Nanna’s know nothing!

Time for a paddle!

It was very sunny but with the wind, it wasn’t exactly hot. Funny how they don’t feel it, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves and I had to drag them out of the water.

Next it was burying in the sand time. Strange how children still do all the things we did when we went to the beach over fifty years ago. Maybe they were doing it a hundred years ago. They’re not really that different to us after all!

On the way back through the dunes we passed a remnant of the war. At the start of the war the beaches were closed off with barbed wire to repel any potential German invasion. Here’s a photo of the remnant of a pillbox. They were composed of concrete-slabs or filled bags, some held anti tank guns others accommodated soldiers with rifles. The pill boxes formed part of a line of defence along the coast.



That must have been awful for local families whose only summer leisure would have been going to the beach.

I lived in another coastal town and the beach was just down the road from our primary school. Despite dire warnings from my Mam about not going onto the beach after school, we often did. How sad that children during the war were robbed of this simple pleasure. They had very little else.

Well the forecast is good for tomorrow (that’s if the Met Office haven’t boobed again) we’re off to the beach where I used to roam after school. Happy days are here again!

Post 114

NOTE

I've been fiddling around with the layout of the blog because I've been having so many problems with the photographs. I've tried widening the space for the text to allow me to paste the code for the photos directly into the blog so that I don't need to use the Blogger photo insert. Well I'm not over keen on the results but I'll try to improve on it another time.