Cleveleys

Yesterday I took Charlie and Courtney to Blackpool. Elizabeth came with us too. We were meant to go the other week when we went to Skipton Castle as it was too wet and cold to go onto the beach. Yesterday was starting to look a little doomed too, not due to the weather but more to do with bad timing! Tonight is the Illuminations switch on in Blackpool and the local council had closed more than half of the car parks to do the preparations! Not a single space could be found. We drove up and down the promenade twice and eventually found a space where there was nothing around us (nowhere to eat etc) and the beach was a little walk away but it was a space! I went to the ticket machine and discovered it was going to cost £6 to park there, now I'm no scrooge but I'm sorry I'm not paying £6 to park in the middle of nowhere! I suggested to Elizabeth that we move on to Cleveleys as I've taken Charlie to the beach there a couple of years ago and it was lovely so off we went! By the time we arrived it was almost lunchtime so we decided to eat first. The cafe we chose was lovely and we all ate well. Charlie was very excited to go and play on the beach so imagine our horror when we got there and the tide was in!!! Just typical, LOL! We did manage to find a section where we could go down onto a pebbled area, it was actually quite comfortable sitting on the pebbles! There was quite a bit of driftwood and seaweed too so Charlie and Courtney were kept amused! We got their buckets and spades out and the made pebble sandcastles, LOL! They really enjoyed throwing pebbles into the sea and they watched a dog playing fetch with sticks in the water, at one point the dog came out just by Charlie and shook itself all over him!! The tide started to go out and eventually we got to see a little bit of sand! After about 2 hours playing we headed off to a different cafe for ice creams before coming home. We couldn't have asked for better weather, we had lovely glorious sunshine but there was a very light breeze so it didn't get too hot. A really lovely but totally not what we'd planned beachy day!