Easter Holiday by the Sea

At last the holidays arrived… and in seemingly no time at all they finished again. With one week away, and the other at home the two weeks may have whizzed past, but they leave behind a trail of happy memories, and all too rare quality family time, to be stored up and treasured.

Ok, we don’t have exotic, exciting or ambitious family holidays. We couldn’t afford to if we wanted them anyway, but fortunately we’re not that sort of family. I’m sure that one day at least some of the children will disagree with this, and will be forever jetting off to some out of the way corner of the earth, just to get away from work and normality for a few days, but for Mike and I (and the children for now) heaven on earth is a British caravan holiday at the seaside.

We’re very fortunate living where we do, in our little corner of England, in that there are numerous beautiful beaches within fairly easy reach, and we can travel a relatively short distance and end up feeling like we’re millions of miles away from home. Our particular favourite place is a holiday park, only an hour and a quarter’s drive away- far enough to feel we’ve got away, but not so far that the journey becomes tedious, boring or even very congested! We travel mainly cross country, and over the moors- taking main roads only where towing our small trailer of luggage dictates we should, and end up at one of the most beautiful coastal bays in southern Devon. The on-site static caravans provide far roomier and sturdier accommodation than a towed caravan would, and with children’s clubs and the beach for daytime entertainment, and a full programme of evening entertainment in the clubroom, our holiday choice suits us perfectly.

The weather could have been kinder to us during our week away, we’ve never before experienced such a cold or windy Easter there! One night we were even kept awake by the caravan shaking in the gales- we thought we were going to look out in the morning and find we’d been blown into the sea! Fortunately the caravans are well anchored down, and so it seems are the trees- by the morning the worst of the storm had passed, fortunately with very little damage to show for it. The weather also could have been much worse- the only rain we had tended to be either overnight or while we were in the clubroom in the evenings, so we weren’t really affected by it much.

Even the cold wind couldn’t stop us enjoying our week away and every day, well wrapped up against the weather, we went down onto the beach or walked along the coastal path to the next bay. Paddling was done in wellies rather than bare feet, and there was no sitting down on the picnic rug reading for hours- instead games of boules were made more interesting by watching to see in which direction the ball was going to be sent by the wind!!

The week flew by far too fast, and with a lot of tears from the younger (and not so young!) members of the family, we had to say ‘goodbye for now’ to all the wonderful staff there, and try to imprint the image of the beautiful sea views on our brains enough to keep us going for the next few months… until we’re able to return again…