Sunset Sandcastles

This has become a feature of our holiday, the kids staying up well past their normal bedtime. They have rarely been in bed before 9:30pm, which is two and a half hours later than normal but thankfully this has had the desired effect by making them sleep longer in the morning.

Today we had a bit of a functional day in Newport having a nice lunch at Pizza Express and doing a bit of birthday card shopping for my mother-in-law. The process took longer than we had thought so we didn't have time to fit in an extra activity so headed for a tea-time spell on the beach.

Problem was that the beach we originally headed to, Steephill Cove, has no vehicle access and, although we found the recommended car park for it, we couldn't find any indication of how to get to the beach itself. With the additional fear that the car park signs saying that it was locked at 5:00pm, we lost our nerve and moved on, deciding to head west towards The Needles (as shown on yesterday's blip).

When we got there, we discovered that the road takes you to the cliff top and not to the bay below, so after taking a few photos, we moved on again to a beach at Totland. Problem was that the beach there is a shingle beach and there would have been little use for buckets and spades. Given that there had been tears back at the original venue when we had decided to abandon that option, we were getting concerned that we were running out of time. So a quick check with a tourist guide pointed us in the direction of Colwell Bay, described as a sand and shingle beach.

We found the car park, got the kids croc'd up and headed to the beach. To my horror, I could see that the tide was in so far that it was at the sea wall and there was no beach left. Some emergency scanning however led my sight to a small bit of beach a couple of hundred yards away and we headed towards it with the feeling of dread that all we could see from as distance was shingle.

It all came good in the end as we got to the end of the sea wall and found a sandy beach stretching round the corner out of our original line of sight. The previous disappointments were immediately forgotten and the kids got down to some serious digging in the sand, splashing in the water, and getting wet and messy in front of a beautiful setting sun.

So, despite getting a couple of decent shots of The Needles, this shot wins today's blip contest as this depicts everything that holidays are about; relaxing in the sun, beautiful views and kids having a ball.