Dear mummy, what a difference a day makes! Yesterday it was a glorious sunny day on the South Coast of England reaching highs of 28 degrees! Today it is wet, miserable and muggy!
Our adventure yesterday started off well as we decided to head for the beach 1 hour & 20 minutes away, south of Chichester to a beach called West Wittering. We’d heard it was one of the best beaches around with white powdery sands and plenty of space to roam. We headed down the M3 motorway from Basingstoke at 10:30am with only light traffic stopping us at Eastleigh and carried on south past Portsmouth on the M27. This is a breeze my mummy thought!
It was only when we got closer to Chichester when our traffic troubles really started. On the small B-road to West Wittering the traffic was awful. We played I spy, sung the whole Frozen movie soundtrack, played with my mermaid and read books. We queued for over an hour and ended up a mile from the beach when we decided enough was enough and turned around to head home. Oh dear, none of us were in a very good mood. Luckily Daddy had a good idea about heading down the other peninsular to Hayling Island. Another big risk heading to a beach that only had one way in and one way out, but it paid off and within 20 minutes we could see the sea! 3 hours later we had reached our destination.
It’s not the best beach for building sand castles, not like the dunes and white sand we were hoping for at West Wittering, but it was perfectly adequate for a little paddle and a picnic.
Hayling Island Beach (West Beachlands) is a pebble beach and is very windy, so we unpacked our UV tent from BabyMoov and our thick wool blanket to stop the pebbles from hurting our bottoms while we sat down. The weather was glorious and even though we only spent 3hrs down there it seemed like we’d been at the beach all day! We were all very tired.
We ate pork pies and sandwiches and mummy even had a welcomed cider, after our long journey thanks to friends.
We made sand castles (well pebble and sand castles) and collected water in our buckets and cleaned our shells. My folks enjoyed watching all the wind surfers and the fishermen.
At one point I ran up the beach towards a fisherman to see what he was doing and my mummy had to run (sprint) after me to make sure I wasn’t up to mischief (or sabotage).
Hayling Island beach (West Beachlands) has a great restaurant & bar called ‘Inn on the Beach’ and the car parking can be paid for over the phone. They also have an ice cream kiosk and a small cafe on site with a skate board park and plenty of parking which overlooks the beach. No hilly climbs with young ones and it seemed quite safe underfoot. We couldn’t see any life guards though and would say it wasn’t overly safe for little ones to swim in due to the currents and the amount of windsurfers gliding up and down near the water’s edge.
A really pleasant couple of hours with the added bonus of seeing my grandparents and spending time with one of my little friends.
I think next time we plan to head to the beach we’ll leave at the crack of dawn!
West Wittering beach…we will come back and conqueror you!
Love Bella x
