Sandbanks

On Wednesday I took the two children to the beach leaving it till later in the afternoon to set  out. I was hoping to avoid the traffic of earlier in the day and to take advantage of visitors leaving and freeing up the parking spaces.

The journey to Alum Chine was good and I expected to be able to park fairly easily. How wrong I was. The roads leading to to the car park were crowded with vehicles being given tickets and the prospect of parking seemed a distant one. As a result, we went on to West Cliff but found that equally busy. The next step was deciding to go on to Sandbanks where I knew there was a larger car park and the chance of more spaces being left as people left for the evening.

It was even worse! The traffic to Sandbanks was slow moving and the car park full. People were not going home but had hunkered down for the day, a long day, in the blasting heat. The children were brilliant and didn't moan at all and we got lucky. A woman told us she was just leaving and we followed her to her car where we waited while she and family got packed up. We were in!

The busy car park was not reflected on the beach where there was plenty of space between groups. We had a good few hours enjoying the sand and sea. I had a swim and Maria and Joseph loved playing with the boards in the warm water.

However, when we left, so did lots of other people. It took 45 minutes to get out of the car park but once out on the road it wasn't too bad. Again, the children were brilliant despite the delays and I was happy to hear Liverpool were leading against Palace.

The headlines the following day told the story of chaos and rubbish at Bournemouth so it is worth mentioning that our experience was very different. The beach was peaceful and respectful, there wasn't litter where we were located and people were patient and calm in the traffic. It was a nice visit even though incredibly busy.