Tuesday 4 September 2007

Monday 27th August 07, Bank Holiday

Holiday! And a really good sleep, much more comfortable than the sofa! A slow start to the day, included a visit to the site shop, to find tonight's tea, pasta with a tin of sweetcorn and peas, made sandwiches and rang Linda as she'd left some dog-related stuff.

We had a family meeting, to agree what we were going to do today. I'd heard that there was a 'naturist' beach towards Holkham, or past it... so my aim was to get there as I really enjoy swimming naked. The rest of the family agreed to walk in that direction, although the children didn't want to go to the nudee beach and Gill doesn't 'do' naked in public, so if we did get to it, it would be just me taking advantage of the situation. Anyway, we set off, starting with an ice cream, and walked fairly slowly for over an hour, where we found a lovely empty patch of beach, so we stopped there. Put up the little tent-type thing... just a sunshade really, and had lunch.

We started to build a sandcastle, near the high tide mark, but within the reach of where the sea got up to. We decided to build a massive cone of a castle, surrounded by a moat, and with a channel leading from the moat towards the sea. I worked with a bucket and worked very hard piling it high, the boys helped with child-sized spades and we ended up with a pile about 5 feet high and 5 feet in diameter at the base. Gill constructed a 'marble-run' to make use of a plastic ball I found, perhaps a ball from a deodorant bottle. She made a spiral from the top, which went twice around the cone, and smoothed the channel out with a half tennis ball we found, so the small plastic ball rolled all the way around and down the castle. We then decorated it with razor shells, oyster shells, seaweed, sponges and dead crabs, a large stick out the top, draped with assorted detritus, making it a 4 hour work of art, with all of us involved. It was a really lovely time, but the sea eventually got to it and the ineviable happened, it got destroyed, but not before someone took some photos.... not us as we didn't have a camera.

We trouped home, hungry, and I sped off once we'd nearly got home to put some water on for pasta. We all ate together, and enjoyed it a lot... food is so much nicer when you've been out in the fresh air all day, and are quite hungry. The boys went to bed quickly and willingly.

Gill and I enjoyed watching 'Boys From The Brown Stuff', a programme about London's sewers... fascinating! An early night for us too.

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