Oh we do love to be beside the seaside

Weston-super-Mare is not a classy seaside town.  Rather it is one of seafront chip shops, funfair rides, a pier, donkeys, bucket and spade stalls and ice-cream kiosks.  Perfect then for little people, who adore all of the above.

And there is space.  Acres of it.  Perfect for football, tag, knocking brothers down and practising the kind of tricky things that Christiano Ronaldo does.

It wasn't the hottest of days, and what you can't see from the pictures is the 80-mile-an-hour wind which was headed straight towards me.  If you sat still for too long, you disappeared under a layer of sand.  We took a picnic, and when I looked down the salad was covered in it after just a few minutes.  Although of course this is part of the full seaside experience.

The sea is a strange beast at Weston.  It's out there somewhere, but it's not the kind of blue and white rolling surf you find in other places.  This is the Bristol Channel, and it's a land of dangerous tides, sinking sand and lethal mud flats.  People do paddle further up the beach, but only when the tide is in.  When it's out, it's really out.  In fact the low tide mark is a full mile from the sea front.  This was the sea on its way in.  It moves fast.  As I said, it's dangerous.  The sign is one of many warning notices.

We ate our sandy picnic, and fed a little of it to the seagulls.  We don't normally do this, but I let the little people do it as a treat.  It was predictably riotous.

Note how they're all looking straight at me.

Then we did donkey rides.

Then we did ice-creams

Then I was done so we went home for tea.  I had a shower first because of the deep sand penetration.

So now the summer holidays are done, and it's back to school.  I will so miss these little chaps when they go.  If only the summer could last forever.