Sitting on the dock of the bay............

Saturday June 23rd to Saturday June 30th Our closest beaches are now over 1hr away at the infamous Jersey shore - too far for me but not much we can do about it at present. Next best thing to being able to pop to the beach regularly was to go on "vacation". G&G being in town provided the perfect excuse so we headed off to a condo we had booked on the highly recommended 7-mile island. Not the greatest fan of change in holiday destinations (bit unfortunate in the given circumstances), I was sceptacle - how could it ever compare to the beauty of Whitstable, Minnis Bay, St Maragret's at Cliff, Seaview, Priory bay, Branscombe, Lulworth cove, Sennen Cove, Porthmeor, Porthminster, Fistral beach, Watergate Bay, the beaches of northern France and the Netherlands.............? I was glad to be proved very wrong - apparently there are beautiful beaches all over the world. 7 mile island is a barrier island on the east coast, 4 blocks wide on which are the resorts of Avalon and Stone Harbour. The island is bordered by sand dunes and amazingly long white sandy beaches with rolling waves on the Atlantic side and a beautiful wetlands bay, home to lots of interesting wild-life, on the west side. We had a wonderfully relaxing week building sand castles (there is a different standard here), watching the diamond back turtles laying their eggs, kayaking in Sea Isle City, watching ospreys and gribes in the wetlands, crabbing, visiting Cape May and their light house and World War II look out tower (not quite sure it was as useful as the ones in Kent.........), body boarding in the surf, jumping in the waves and swinging our legs with our Jersey version of fish and chips (breaded flounder with sweet potato or old bay fries) watching the sunset over the dock of the bay. Even M managed to join us for a couple of nights after he had shouldered the brunt of the moving. Congratulations to V for winning the crazy golf championship but G for coming a very close runner up. Didn't knowingly bump into the stars of the show (since I have never seen it not sure how I would know even if I had......). Very much looking forward to returning to The Shore for many reasons including that it is much less sticky than PA - need to come up with some clever ruse. Avalon really is cooler by a mile.