Sunny West Wittering beach day

Whenever we go on holiday, I always try to take N somewhere that’s close enough to go to the seaside for a beach day.  We recently stayed in Southsea, Portsmouth – yes it has its own beach but it’s shingle like so much of the south coast around that area. But a short journey to West Wittering and N had the sandy beach he prefers.

Oh and I have the pretty beach huts!  Which were surprisingly unused for such a beautiful hot day in the summer holidays.

I wasn’t sure how much parking there would be, so we arrived at West Wittering at around 9 o’clock. We were parked just opposite the café and right near the main walkway through to the beach, by the toilets and lifeguards.  And getting there early meant we had a choice of a pretty empty beach with the sea at low tide.  A short walk along and we set up.  It was perfect because we were close enough to the car to be able to leave valuables in there and just get money out when we wanted to go to the café rather than having to leave valuables on the beach when we go to the sea.

N is mostly a digger.  He loves to build sandcastles, but prefers to just dig holes.  Or in this case, take over other people’s.  Having a few holes near us did help other people stay a bit further away.  Unlike the Aussie woman who pitched her beach tent virtually touching the next family’s windbreak, so ‘we’ll know where we’re place because we’ll see the windbreak’. That would have really annoyed me (and she blocked out our view of the sea!). As time went on it did get really busy, although not as bad as somewhere like Weymouth, and no aggressive seagulls either.

N wanted to go down to the sea to fill in his moat.  I had to explain the sea was out and he wasn’t going to get the water up fast enough, but he still wanted to go down there.  But we only made it to the ‘lagoon’ behind the sandbar.  It was actually great for young children to paddle and play without being washed out on inflatables.  N didn’t really want to go in the water though. 

Since Wales camping when he refused to body board, he’s not really wanted to try again since then.  We did get his board out because he wanted to pull it around and I thought he might paddle on it, but nope, he wouldn’t get on.  Compared to last year when I couldn’t get him off it, his mind this summer has certainly gone a bit skew whiff when it comes to water and boats.  Very strange.

Unfortunately the safe swimming area between the flags was really small.  Too narrow for everyone who wanted to go in the water  and I don’t think that encouraged N.  But the water was lovely just paddling and enjoying the warmth.

We’d bought our sandwiches for lunch earlier than lunch – it turned out to be a great move because when we went back at around 12.30 to get ice creams, the queue was out the door.  I don’t understand why the ice cream only windows weren’t open (it was pre-packed ice creams only).  The queue didn’t seem to be moving and I had the right change, so grabbed a member of staff to ask if we could just take the ice creams and give her the money to pass on to those behind the till.  Phew, at least it meant we didn’t have to a) queue for ages in a queue with people waiting for hot food and hot drinks and b) ending up with melting ice creams before we’ve even paid.

The ice creams just finished off our beach day (morning) nicely, and we headed off for an afternoon exploring somewhere else.  West Wittering is a lovely beach and although neither of us can hack more than half a day at the beach unless we’ve got lots of friends with us, I’d love to go back there some other time.

Where’s your favourite beach?

Why not take a look at these similar posts:

• Exploring Southsea and Clarence Pier
• Days out in Hampshire
• Best seaside towns and beaches in the UK