The UK was about to enter a heat wave and record it’s highest ever temperatures so we looked at the forecast for Gloucestershire and it was due to be 34 degrees. We then looked at Swansea and the weather said 27 degrees so we decided to have a beach day!

We had visited Rhossili last year on a hot day and knew the carpark did not fill up too early so we left home at 7.30am (with an amazing picnic) and did the 2.5 hour drive to The Gower.

When we arrived the tide was in (which meant we couldn’t walk out to Worm’s Head) but we still walked along the headland as the views are so beautiful.

We reached the Coast Guards Hut and it said the causeway would be open from 1.25pm which was too late for us. It was lovely to see that the binoculars back out (when we visited last year they had been removed because of Covid). Izzy had a look through them and spotted a couple of people on Worm’s Head. We assumed they must have either sailed there or walked at the previous low tide to maybe do some fishing and return later.

We decided to follow the coastal path and reached a viewpoint overlooking Fall Bay – a beach we have never visited. We could also just see the opening into Mewslade Bay.

It was getting hot so we wanted to head back to Rhossili although Tom had carried on walking so it took us ages to shout and get his attention to come back to us! He had got so far he almost couldn’t hear us.

We returned to the car, ate most of our picnic, packed the cool bag full of drinks and snacks, loaded up with the body boards, deckchairs and umbrellas (we have to do a beach day in style) and made our way down the cliff path to the beach.

Tom and Izzy were straight in the water on their body boards and I went for a paddle. The water was actually quite warm – and very clear. By this point the tide had gone out loads so our beach set up seemed quite a long way from where we were in the sea. I decided I wasn’t going to swim so I looked after the car keys phones etc whilst Stu played in the water with Tom and Izzy.

After an hour Tom got out as he was cold, shortly followed by Stu and Izzy. We chilled for about half an hour before tackling the big climb back to the car – which we noted we did a lot faster than last year. After a quick ice cream we headed home to Gloucester.