All week the forecast for Saturday had been showing morning showers so we didn’t attempt to get up too early. However, when we woke and rechecked the forecast it had changed to full sun all day. It was about 7.30am so we had a mad rush to try and be out of the house by 9am as we wanted to visit the beach and thought it would be busy. We made packed lunches, loaded the bikes onto the car and headed to Island Beach State Park which is about 70 minutes from us.

We arrived at about 10.15am and we were able to enter – guessing everyone had also thought the weather wouldn’t be great!. It was free which was a bonus as charges were not coming in until 1 June.

We parked up at swimming area 1 – the only car park with open facilities, ate our lunch in the car as we didn’t have a cool-box and decided to head onto the beach before going for a cycle as it was so hot! We noticed everyone else was fully kitted out for the beach with towels, roller cool-boxes, deckchairs, umbrellas etc and made a decision to do a big ‘beach’ amazon shop when we got home!

The beach was lovely – quite a few people were on it but nothing too busy and we headed away from the boardwalk to set up our two towels by the sea.

There was no life guard on duty so swimming was not allowed – however the waves did look pretty rough. We did have a paddle and despite the heat the water was icy cold so there was no way we could have gone any deeper than our feet!

^Paddling

We noticed that as the sea went over the sand little air holes appeared. Tom decided to dig down with his feet and the sand was full of little baby crustaceans of some description about 2 inches long.

After an hour or so we were finished on the beach and ready for our cycle. We wanted to reach the end of the peninsular to hopefully get a view of the lighthouse on Long Beach. It was an easy cycle as there is a cycle lane on both sides of the road (although parts of it were covered in sand) and the road is straight and flat the whole way.

We cycled past loads of trails, a nature area (which was closed) and an Osprey nest with an Osprey perched in it watching us!

We noticed loads of jeeps over taking us and then parking up and letting the air out of their tyres as there were areas for off roading. Izzy decided that she wants a jeep when she is older! Also at the end of the peninsular 4WD’s could go onto the beach and set up for fishing.

We sat on the beach for 10 minutes then cycled back to the car. In total we cycled 16km . We headed for home stopping off at an ice cream shop in Seaside Park. Stu, Tom and Izzy had ice cream sundaes whilst I had an ice cream soda.

We had wanted to be home to watch the launch of Space X at 3.22pm but were running late so I let the kids watch it on Nasa live on my phone whilst we drove.