Day 1 of our summer – Lymington Sea Water Baths inflatable course and Highcliffe Beach

We’re on day 1 of our UK summer holiday (excluding the travel day to get here!). And my goodness we’re ready for it! The kids have just officially finished school and have both been Deregistered from their school… a happy but emotional time for all of us! The kids managed it well (I’ll be doing a separate post on that part), but we couldn’t have been happier and more relieved to get in the van and drive down to the south coast for our first summer holiday!

We’re waiting until September to begin our travels in earnest (as I mentioned before, to account for the busy summer period and higher prices). So for this summer, we’re going to do what we usually do – around 2 weeks on the south coast of England and a week in the Lake District! Comfortable for us and well-worn, which is strangely comforting as we prepare to leave on our completely different travel experience come the autumn.

After arriving at the south coast and getting ourselves settled and the food shop sorted, we made the most of the fact that it’s still the school summer term for most kids down here and booked into the Lymington Sea Water Baths inflatable course. We’ve been coming for the past 2 years, so this time makes it our 3rd annual visit, and we love it.

The course is set up in the Lymington historic sea water baths, a salt water based swimming and bath area, where people can swim, paddle board, do the inflatable course and enjoy the views over the marina at Lymington. It’s gorgeous.

We booked online and it cost around £56 this year for a family of two adults and two children. That’s for a 55 minute session, which is perfect for us, as our son is very lean and usually feels the cold after 45 mins or so! Well, usually…..

Because of the crazy heatwaves we’ve been having in England, the water was 24-25 degrees, and we decided to forgo our usual wetsuits and just wear our swim gear. And that was such a good decision! The water was amazing, and it made climbing on and off the inflatable course a lot easier without having the restrictions of our wetsuits.

We could do the course again tomorrow, it’s such good fun. The slides are great, we challenged ourselves to walking as far as we could on the long balance tube, and had a brilliant time dangling from the Tarzan rope swing (probably the kids favourite part… and my husbands).

Well worth a visit if you are nearby and fancy a little adrenaline rush – Lymington Sea Water Baths

After we finished up in Lymington we went back home for lunch, before packing up the car to head to a beach we haven’t been to before – Highcliffe beach. It was such a gorgeous day, we wanted to get out and enjoy the sea breeze with Bramble the dog and drink in the views.

We drove to Highcliffe Beach top car park and parked for 4 hours (which was a slightly eye-watering £8 or so, but that’s the south coast for you!). Personally, to get those views and enjoy the lovely weather, I’m happy to pay every now and then.

It was a bit of a trek with our kit and the trolley/ pulley thing we had put it all in, but very worth it when we had made it to the bottom of the cliff and onto the beach! Our son was not so interested in swimming in the sea, so he hunted for shells whilst our daughter spent most of her time in the water. The sea was incredibly warm (for England) and it was easy to spend a lot of time riding the little waves as they came in.

Bramble was probably the best pleased out of all of us. He had a tent all to himself, a cooling dip in the sea and got to lick the left overs of an ice cream tub. So a real win for him! He wasn’t as keen to go in the water as he had been when he was a puppy, but he really loved being fresh and cool in the shade. And his fur feels amazingly soft after his sea dip!