Spectator writers on the UK’s best beaches

Tom Holland
Trevone, Cornwall

 
Pretty much every summer, my family and my cousins head for a farm in north Cornwall, strategically situated for visits to our favourite beach: Trevone. A beautiful cove with breakers, cliffs and an unobtrusive shop, its chief appeal is the opportunity it provides for building colossal sandcastles. Each year, our ambitions grow ever more Babylonian. This summer we excelled ourselves. It was my nephew’s 21st birthday, and to mark his coming of age he wanted to build a sandcastle on a truly lunatic scale. His dream was fulfilled. Armed with industrial shovels and a wheelbarrow, we constructed a vast array of fortifications: a towering central donjon; a wall of which Hadrian would have been proud; Minas Tirith-style rings of defences; enigmatic neolithic monuments. We even had paddy fields. And then, after eight hours’ solid work, the tide came in and, like Atlantis, it all vanished beneath the waves.