Summer time at the seaside

So, I saw all types of England today. I finally made the three-minute trek up the hill to see the castle ruins. It's amazing to think the headland has been occupied since 600 BC, and the castle since the 12th century. I found this neat little area with the remains of an outpost the Romans had built, and it had a grassy trench that provided shelter from the wind. I lay and read a book in the sun and then discovered that underneath was an ancient chapel that went into the hillside. It was so peaceful, all I could hear
was the sea just out of sight down the cliff.

I went across and looked at the panorama of the town from the lookout post. There was a thundercat racing day in the harbour, and the sound reached all the way up to the headland very clearly. The people on the beach looked like little ants dotted on the sand. I walked down the hill past the centuries old cemetery-cum-carpark (the cemetery is old, the carpark is new!) with the headstones all askew and bitten by age and wind, until I reached the main promenade for the bay.

It was the complete opposite of the headland, the footpaths were crowded with people in football shirts and white trainers, soft serve cones in one hand and walking behind granny in her motorised wheelchair laden down with plastic buckets and spades from the pound shop on the waterfront. The bustle still surprises me, because I don't really consider it to be a big town, and because I live here I keep forgetting that it's a holiday destination and these people are mostly weekend tourists.

I queued up for a soft serve cone, and watched Brown Owl sort out the young Brownies into strawberry-flavoured and vanilla-flavoured groups. That's the second group of Brownies I've seen in a fortnight - they are all in uniform colours, bright sunny yellow or soft coffee brown, and clearly a more popular group than back home, although still just as geeky. Then I wandered along the beach past all the flabby shirtless boys, toddlers shovelling sand into buckets, "turn the bucket the other way up, you can fit more sand in," says one cheerful dad to his enterprising son, who has managed to pack a lot of sand into the rim of an upside-down bucket. The pony rides aren't in much demand today, but there are plenty of hired blue and white striped decked chairs for the mums and grans.

At the other end of the beach, further away from the fish and chip shops and the man calling out the bingo numbers from inside one of the penny arcades across the road, the thundercat and jetski racers have claimed the beach and are milling about waiting for the last race of the afternoon. The wind was too breezy for me so I kept walking, enjoying the being barefoot in the sand.