h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the sand:
Build a sandcastle.
Dig a huge pit, sit in it and watch it fill up with water.
Poke purple jellyfish with a stick.
Fly a kite.
Read.
Watch the people (Cavendish Beach is NEVER empty).
Skip flat rocks into the water.
Go beachcombing.
Walk in the rain.
Smooch.

In the water:
Swim.
Run in until you fall down.
Throw yourself at incoming waves. See how futile it is.
Smooch.

A lot more could definitely be said about Cavendish beach, but the specifics of all that delightful stuff somehow escaped description as I sat thinking about the place. The single dominant image I have is of a picture perfect sunset, the last rays, diffused by a heavy overcast, melting into a shimmering flat sea.

JTG

Flash yer todger at passers by shouting .."need somewhere to hang yer towel?"

Point at the fat people and shout.."Don't panic, mate! Greenpeace will be here soon to refloat you"

Go up to the meatiest, beefiest body builder you can find and ask him where he gets his steroids and make fun of his small willy

I think we may have met. Weren't you the one buried up to the eyebrows with a jellyfish on your head?

JTG

Learn Japanese so you can understand the tour guide and follow the signs to Green Gables. Or just lie in the sand.

Yell back at the guy who said GreenPeace was on the way to refloat me..."I'm not a whale but a highly evolved sea slug whose chosen this beach for all my future bottom feeding!"

Cavendish beach is too pristine for good bottom feeding. Try Wall Street.

JTG

It sounds like a fabulous place. I pressed the [page down] key hoping to read more. I was disappointed to find I'd already finished reading it. That was a great entry - left me wanting more!

I hope someone will contribute some more. This was originally just a forum posting for 'The World's Best Beaches'.

http://www.h2g2.com/A113923

... honestly. It seems to have decomposed.

JTG

Wow. I could hardly complain that article was too short. Makes me feel like going to the beach. Trouble is, I live in the British Midlands - miles away from the nearest beach. I was brought up on Brighton beach (in Sussex) where my parents were in the "bucket and spade" trade. I don't half miss it.

It's interesting how one of the key qualities people look for in a great beach is that there should be very few people there. That's the trouble with having over 6 billion folks on the planet. It's hard to find a place to get away from them and all the beautiful, wild places are filling up with them. When you find a perfect beach, it's probably best to keep quite about it.

The last time my wife and I were in England we took a coach trip from Nottingham to Skeggy; which, in April, was close to perfect. The beach was almost deserted, and the whelk stalls and fish and chip shops were ready and waiting to be called upon, whenever they were needed. I thought about that on our holiday this autumn on Cape Cod: This place is beautiful (I thought), but I wish there was a place to buy whelks. There's a lot to be said for the English version of seaside. Sun, sand, and surf are all very well; but it's nice to be able to toddle off for a pint and some chips when the fancy takes you. By chance, the first 'native' we encountered on Cape Cod was a very nice girl from Cleethorpes.

Have you seen the Entry on Skegness? It treats my sentimental favourite seaside place a bit harshly. I was, after all, a part of the invading horde from Nottingham in the 60's.

http://www.h2g2.com/A139466

JTG

Yes that was a bit harsh. And upsetting if you have all these lovely memories of the place. I've never been to Skegness. I think practically the whole population of Leicester used to go there for the "Leicester Fortnight" when all the knitting factories would close. The kids from the village I now live in (Husbands Bosworth in Leicestershire) all used to go there too. I never fancied it. It always sounded a bit dirty and tacky.

I've only been to the east coast once. I went to Wells-Next-the-Sea in June and it snowed! The dogs I had then loved it but I didn't. The sand was sort of mud coloured and filthy. I got the impression that the tide didn't come in to wash the beach. The sea looked kind of sludge coloured as though full of algae living on the sewage. Wells-Next-the-Sea is very popular though. I prefer the beaches of the south, south-west, west and north-west. The Western Highlands is best for scenery and the south and south-west beaches are best for swimming. I like the smells you get at touristy beaches like candy-floss, doughnuts, chips and vinegar - all the stuff that sort of sticks in your mind like an emotion from childhood. But for pure delightfulness I like a clear, clean, empty pebble beach at dawn with crystal clear water and that quality of sort of pinky-blue light.

I watched Arthur C Clarke on television last night, lounging in his beautiful home in Sri Lanka. The beaches and the Indian Ocean looked so inviting. What a shame that there is so much hate and bloodshed in such a paradise!

As a boy, one of my favourite holiday spots was the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland. There were some nice beaches, but the absolute best bit was the tide pools on the rockier parts of the coast, with lots of big seaweed-covered boulders. That's my idea of a blissful retirement... finding a rocky shoreline and secretly becoming a boy again, playing in the tidepools.

JTG

Crazy that people should be killing or knocking the stuffing out of each other in an environment that could be like paradise if they could just be nice. No accounting for human nature.

Yeah, tide pools - all the little treasures and curiosities. Hermit crabs, little shrimps and fishes hiding in weed and under stones. Can't beat it. I used to like digging for crabs along the groynes on Brighton beach when I was a kid. If you dug up worm casts you could find enormous wrag and lug worms.

I'm with you. I can't imagine anything better just now. Poking around in rock pools while the dogs gallop about at the water's edge.

Sal

Spent a wild and dramatic winter's day on my own on the Isle of Arran a couple of years ago. I remember the seals and the deer and the swift shifting skies, the beautiful light on the hills and the real thrill of sipping whisky in a wee pub in front of a fire, writing silly postcards.

It's just taken me over two hours to get to work this morning. We had a bit of stormy weather last night - flooding and debris this morning - and Britain's rail infrastructure has gone to the dogs it seems.

I wouldn't mind being on Arran right now.

Sam

I remember there being a lot of deer. There was an albino stag about at one point, wasn't there?

I'd love to go back; it's been... god, it must be 30 years. I feel ancient all of a sudden. Write us an Entry on Arran, Sam, and make us young again.

JTG

I was named after that mini-island near Arran - Ailsa Craig - I got the name Craig, dropping the Ailsa (because I turned out to be a boy). We also lived around the area for a couple of years. I remember how unpolluted and living the coast was. We often went rock "fishing" south of Ayr - This meant hiking off with a pack of gear to scale a cliff face to find a nice secluded bay - play with the creatures in the rock pool, and cast out into the waves to catch a codling - making sure it is big enough, or returning it and try to catch another (this would ake a couple of hours).

Rock pools on the island of Alderney in the English Channel were quite awesome too.

The closest equivalent I have now is poking around in the banks of the Ottawa river - avoiding the beer caps and cigarrette butts. In Gatineau park and in the greenbelt we have some nice swamps full of frogs, and thingies, and I do my best to help lobby for their protection. Still I miss the seaside tidal ecology deal.

I work on the north shore of Lake Ontario; and, even though the Great Lakes are beautiful in their own right, they can't compare to the sheer fecundity of the sea. I often think that it would be interesting to be able to look millennia into the future to see if nature has managed to do a better job of filling the lakes with stuff... hopefully the stuff we're busy filling them with won't put her off too much.

JTG