Westbourne Beach - Two Hours for a Little More Freedom

There is something different about walking onto a sandy beach. Living in Worthing, I am used to the familiar crunch of pebbles beneath my feet, so arriving at Westbourne Beach in Bournemouth at the weekend felt like a proper change of scenery. Soft sand, a huge blue sky and the sea stretching out in front of me. After a two-hour drive, shoes came off, the phone became irrelevant and there was nowhere else I needed to be.

The weather could not have been much better. Clear blue skies, warm sunshine and fresh sea air coming in from the Channel. The water was surprisingly warm and clear, with the kind of gentle conditions that make you want to stay in rather than rush back out. There was no agenda to the day. No schedule, no notifications demanding attention and nothing that particularly needed achieving. Just the beach, the sea, the sun and Olive wandering alongside me.

Spending and sharing time with great company. Also, Olive has a useful way of reinforcing the simplicity of moments like this. Dogs do not seem particularly interested in what happened yesterday or what might need doing tomorrow. There is sand to explore, water to investigate and someone familiar walking beside them. That is enough. Watching her on the beach was another reminder of how much of our own lives can become occupied by things that are not actually happening in the present moment.

Walking towards the water together, there was a real feeling of freedom. Not the dramatic kind of freedom that requires disappearing to the other side of the world, but something much simpler. Bare feet in warm sand. Sunshine on your skin. Clear water around your legs. Breathing deeply and noticing that the air smells different beside the sea. For a few hours, the constant background noise of everyday life simply disappeared.

We often talk about finding time to be in nature as though it needs to be a major expedition. It doesn't. Sometimes it is a forest, sometimes a field, sometimes the familiar shoreline at Worthing and sometimes it is worth driving a couple of hours simply to stand somewhere different. Changing the environment can change your perspective surprisingly quickly. The problems waiting at home may still exist when you return, but for a while they stop occupying the whole landscape.

And that was probably the best part of Westbourne Beach: nothing needed anything from me. There was no requirement to be productive or to make the day useful. It was enough to walk, swim, feel the sun, breathe the sea air and spending quality time in epic company.

Two hours each way might sound like a long drive for a day on the beach.

On this occasion, it was worth every mile.

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