Perfect Weather?

It was so very hot and sunny earlier in the year I bought tons of sun cream, yet as soon as the school holidays started, away went the sun.

For me, this has been perfect holiday weather. Being cloudy has meant I haven’t had to keep applying sun cream to young skin and worrying in case I missed a bit.

None of the kids want to play on the beach any more – they just want to swim in the sea, so in future I’m only going down there when the tide is in. Last week my eldest granddaughter gashed her leg on a rock just under the water. If we’d been down there at high tide, it wouldn’t have happened.

Not deep enough for swimming

Poor little girl came away from the beach with blood pouring down her leg (looking worse because she was wet) and I thought we’d end up at minor injuries, but once she was in the bath, the bleeding stopped and we went back to the beach to rejoin the others. I think she’ll have a scar on her leg though as the cut was quite deep.

We went to good old Clacton Pier this week. My smallest little person was at last tall enough by a whole centimetre to go on the Aqua Blast Lagoon in a boat of his own – and they all had a blast (see what I did there). Only seven boats were operating and my crew took up four of them. Ours were the red/blue, green/blue, blue/yellow and blue/white.

Aqua Blast Lagoon

We spent nearly seven hours there. When we arrived it was raining and chilly, but within an hour the sun had come out, the jackets were stowed in my backpack and of course I didn’t have any sun cream so we all came home with sun-kissed faces – but no burn.

The 146 year old pier is undergoing refurbishment and I could already see a great improvement. I hope the refurbishment includes updating the loos – they still have the old high pull-the-chain kind of cisterns.

Dusty enjoyed his walk after heavy rain left a small lake on the field. The gulls love it when the field floods – they don’t love it when a water-happy dog splashes through it. By the next day the wind had dried the lake up.

Dusty making a splash!

I may have mentioned that I love gulls. When I was a child and my mum was in convalescence after a major operation, she said that what she missed most (after the family) were the gulls.

I took this photo of the lighthouse because there was a gull on top making that lovely racket that gulls make. When I was a child and even when my own kids were small, that beach was sandy. I don’t know where all the shingle has come from.

Can you see him?

And I took this one of the sky because… well you can see why.

Gorgeous Gulls

One day the boys and I had a walk round the woods while the girls went to the park which was lovely and relaxing.

Woodland Adventures

Only two and a half weeks of summer holiday left. Where has the time gone? It goes much too fast.