I love Crooklets beach in Bude, it's just out of the town centre and is usually pretty empty as most people seem to follow the signs to Summerleaze which can get overcrowded. Unfortunately dogs aren't allowed on Crooklets during the main season so we thought we were going to have to use Summerleaze last year so headed there on arrival and it was so busy. I walked up to town though for something for lunch and spotted some steps down the cliff onto Middle beach which we'd never used before (it's in the middle of the two beaches) and the sign said that dogs were allowed so we used that each day afterwards and it was gorgeous, very quiet and the sand was beautiful, but close enough to the safe areas where the lifeguards are for the boys to use their boards.
Our first holiday after Joe was born - he was about 2 months old - was to the Isle Of Wight and we went to Alum Bay. I'd been when I was a child and had loved collecting the sand from the cliffs with my cousins but this time you had to fill the bottles with sand from little boxes in the shop. It had become much more commercialised over the years.
Ton, I remember my older cousin taking some of us younger ones up to the Southport area and parking on a beach there. We went to Southport on quite a few family days out when we were little and the sea was always, always miles out - we never got to paddle in it