Southport......

(Click on photos to bigify)

As you know we took our five grandchildren to Southport (Lancashire) last Thursday and what a great day we had!

We loaded the children into the people carrier and all the food, drinks and games (cricket set, kite, football, frisbees, buckets and spades) and set off at 10 a.m. The route was motorway most of the way so MWM did the driving (you know I don't 'do' motorways).

Half an hour into the journey Harry asks "Are we there yet?" LOL

Southport is only about 40 miles from where we live and should take a little over an hour but the traffic was really heavy and slow on the motorway so it was 11.30 when we arrived. You can actually drive straight onto the beach and stay there all day for £3.50 which is quite reasonable and with all the 'stuff' we had to unload we needed to be right there where we could just drag it out of the boot and dump it on the sand.

Before we unloaded anything we marched over the main road to the toilets as the children all needed to 'go' by this time. Once back at the beach we put the rug down and had our picnic before getting down to the business of enjoying ourselves.

First the buckets and spades came out with all the children showing their skills at making sandcastles, before they decided they needed water to make the sandcastle stick together -

then the long trek to the sea. The tide goes out for miles at Southport, in fact sometimes it goes out that far that you can't even see it! Granddad rounded them all up with their buckets and off they trotted. Look how far out the sea was.....

They were having a great time in the shallow water, Nate liked it so much he sat in it! They collected shells and managed to carry some water back then Granddad got the kite out, much to the children's delight. They ran up and down and did manage to get it flying but it's a big kite and they didn't have much control over it so it kept crashing.

Next the big boys - Granddad, Sam and Kai had a game of cricket whilst Harry used the frisbee as a steering wheel pretending he was a formula one racing driver. Gracie decided she was hungry again so had another picnic, whilst Nate tried to pinch the stumps to cries of

"Nate get out of the way".

The football had a good kicking before Kai said he wanted to build a huge sandcastle with little ones all around it - a task all the grandchildren wanted a hand in. Of course Nanna had to get involved. Granddad decided he'd done enough and lay down on the rug. He was enjoying a little rest until Nate decided to throw a whole bucket full of sand all over his head so that put paid to his snooze!

Here's the sandcastle and the proud builders.

The next task was creating some roads in the sand for a village, Granddad helped with that.

We'd been on the beach for about 3 hours now and the children were getting a little tired, so it was ice-cream time before we set off home. There are ice-cream vans driving slowly up and down the beach all day so we hailed one and the children all chose an ice cream, of course Granddad had to have one too! Whilst they were enjoying their ice-creams I started loading everything into the various bags and into the back of the carrier, then as they finished eating we dusted the sand of their feet, put their shoes back on and secured them in their car seats.

Nate was asleep within minutes of us setting off home but the others were still excited and chattered all the way home. They were very tired but very happy and we were exhausted and ready for bed! We had a great day and they children wanted to know "when can we go again?"

Mmmmm, we'll see .........