Beaches

Having grown up on the Suffolk Heritage Coast, I always think of myself as a beach lover. That is, until I get to a beach. In the post-Christmas gloom, many of you will be thinking about booking beach holidays. Don't do it without reading on!

Remember all the photos in your holiday brochure would have been taken with expensive lenses and filters, crucially, BEFORE EVERYONE GOT UP. In Cala Galdana two years ago, the beach beyond my balcony was identical to the turquoise-hued dream in the brochure - except that there was approximately one person per square yard on it. Trying to get near the sea was rather like trying to get a drink during a theatre interval, except with more jiggling sunburned flesh.

As someone deeply uncomfortable with exposed skin (my ideal beach outfit would be a babygro, with feet) I spend most of my time south of Dover in a state of acute embarrassment. I remember laying Margaret Rutherford-like, in a full-length sundress on the beach in Sharm-el-Sheikh, staunchly ignoring a topless Italian aerobics class two metres away. Wherever I choose to deposit my towel, I guarantee that within 10 minutes a pair of nubile and uninhibited teenagers will begin playing ping-pong right next to me and sometimes, over me. Oddly, my husband never seems bothered.

Worst still is France. Elderly naturists lurk round every rock and cove (nearly always male.) In Brittany I was confronted with such a specimen at the base of a cliff. I could either saunter nonchalantly past him or head straight out to sea. “I stand by my decision” I remember thinking, as the water closed in over my shoulders.

UK beaches are great as long as you keep your coat on. It has been scientifically proven that nobody has ever felt warm in Aldeburgh.

All in all I conclude that I AM a beach lover, given that I am looking at it through the wound-down window of a car, preferably with a bag of chips. Roll on summer!