West Wittering beach jaunt turned into a nightmare: CHERYL GIBBS

Have you ever have one of those disastrous days where you wish you hadn’t got out of bed?I had one of those on Bank Holiday Monday when I decided, quite off the cuff, that it would be a good idea to go to West Wittering.
Sunseekers, parasols and windbreaks on West Wittering Beach.  Photo by Derek MartinSunseekers, parasols and windbreaks on West Wittering Beach.  Photo by Derek Martin
Sunseekers, parasols and windbreaks on West Wittering Beach. Photo by Derek Martin

The problem with this is I didn’t make the decision until gone 11am.

I really should have known better from my experiences of going there as a child – if you want to go to the Witterings on a blisteringly hot day, you need to get up early. Very early.

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However, Google Maps told me that it would take an hour and 20 minutes which, given the fact we had had a decent lie-in, we didn’t think that was too bad.

All was well up until the A27 turn-off point for West Wittering.

In fact, we didn’t hit any traffic at all up until that point and got there in less than half an hour.

But it went disastrously wrong from that point on, taking a whopping two and a half hours to get from the A27 turn-off to the beach.

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Needless to say, I was livid. Matt, who was driving, somehow managed to keep his cool, though I don’t know how.

We have no air conditioning in the car and we were going at a snail’s pace the whole way. Several times we contemplated turning around and going home but we had already invested so much time that it felt pointless.

When we finally got there – having paid a staggering £8.50 to park our car – we walked down to the beach and bumped straight into our best friends Denise and Del.

By that point it was 2.30pm and they were just leaving, having been there since 9.30am – that’s clearly how you do it.

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I couldn’t believe that of the tens of thousands of people there, we bumped straight into them.

We spent two and a half hours on the beach before deciding to head on home, which took another hour-and-a-half – with 50 per cent of that time spent trying to get out of the car park.

On the way home we picked up a Chinese, in a desparate bid to salvage our day. A few bites in and Matt found a giant grey hair, so that was our meal ruined.

I couldn’t wait to get back to work!

Will our garden ever be finished?

Finishing our garden has dominated our lives for more than a year.

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Never in a million years did I think when we bought this house it would take this amount of work – and manpower – to finish.

At first it was a labour of love, but it has become an absolute nightmare.

I should listen to Matt a bit more.

He disagreed when I said: ‘It will take a few days and a couple of grand’.

And he was right, which is annoying.

I am hopeful we’ll get it done by Bonfire Night so we can host at least one event, before we stop getting invited to others because people are fed-up of their invitations not being returned.

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Our self-indulgent ‘must have it now’ attitude can’t be good

Is there a cure for binge-watching Netflix? For someone who did not have the television streaming service until recently, I’ve become a serial binger.

I can watch an entire series in just a couple of days and, quite frankly, I’m not sure it’s particularly healthy.

As a society we're not content with watching one episode per week like the old days. We have to watch four back-to-back.

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I’m worried about the long term impact this ‘must have it now’ syndrome is having on us because, let’s face it, we don’t like waiting anymore, do we?

Everything is handed to us on a plate, so perhaps the lesson here is to instil some self-discipline.

Who’s with me? Anyone…?

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