Anna's blog: Summers In My Happy Place

Anna shares how a seaside reset brought freedom and family connection.

Every summer, we spend 2 weeks in Frinton-On-Sea on the Essex coast. My mother had holidays here as a child, she then brought my brother and I when we were little and now she brings the next generation: my children.

It’s a very special place to us: tree lined avenues of houses, a busy high street of ice cream and sweet shops, cafes and fish and chips, sandy beaches punctuated by battered wooden breakwaters, lined with pastel coloured beach huts and a promenade which bustles with family picnic tables.

I love that the beach is a shared playground to all ages: the brave and hardy swimmers, families playing beach cricket and boules, children playing hopscotch and collecting shells, toddlers with buckets and spades. It transforms each day with the tides leaving a blank canvass for the new day ahead. Imagine if nations could share the world as harmoniously as we share an English beach in summer.

We love walking our dog on the beach in the early morning, ahead of the heat and busyness of the day. Often there are horses and riders out this time, the water is calm and flat, the new sand perfect and untouched with only our foot and paw prints to be seen.

With my children, every year has been different. From the first year when my son was less than a year old, he’d sit happily and splash in the shallow waters. My daughter loving swimming in the sea with granny, asking to ‘go deep’. We’ve had serious sandcastle competitions and lots of fun defending them as the tide came in. As they grew older, they’ve loved using body boards at high tide, flying kites on the Greensward, swimming out to rafts, meeting friends and enjoying picnics.

This year has been different again: we brought bikes with us and they’ve been able to go on bike rides along the sea front, go for ice creams or for smoothies in the coffee shop. Allowing them this freedom has been amazing for them, and for me too.

I love getting up early and going for walks with the children and dog, swimming in the sea and playing games. But the pressure to be with them and entertain them every second of every day has eased. It’s a feeling I thought would never come. In the depths of parenting in the younger years and latterly needing to coax them away from their screens, being needed was relentless.

These summer days are so special, the familiarity of Frinton, the feeling of safety and freedom and a simpler, slower pace. I try to breathe it all in and capture in my mind so that I can conjure it up when work, school and cold temperatures return.