This was the view from the van at Harlyn yesterday. We have been waiting for the whole festive season for the weather to improve enough for us to spend a day by the beach. One of our regular winter treats, usually on Christmas or Boxing Day. Harlyn has been much on my mind since my work at The Box last week. My poor insomniac head was pondering the inclusion of a human skeleton, from about 2000 BC, in an exhibition at the museum.The skeleton and it’s Cist style slate coffin had been exhumed from an Iron Age cemetery just beyond the beach at Harlyn. In the circular and always inconclusive thinking of an occasional insomniac I felt so sorry for those bones, that ex human, that loved one ,who had been moved from somewhere so beautiful to be gawped at in a museum, even a very splendid museum. I would so prefer my own bones or those of the people I love to lie close to where the waves break over a beach. Left alone where they had been interred in the place where they lived and died.

I realise far more learned heads than mine have debated the rights and wrongs of showing skeletons in museums. But the curious workings of my night-time brain are never restricted by my lack of qualifications or experience in any subject. Now I’ve got my nighttime pondering off my chest I can waffle on about what a gorgeous day it was today. This is not as random as it seems, when my childhood home was built a terracotta pot and some bones were found and put on a show in Colchester Castle. I always felt sad that that person had been moved too. My parents always thought I had an overactive imagination.

Our real world day started with coffee at Strong Adolfo’s and one of my favourite complicated images created by sharp bright sunlight. Soon enough we were on the beach, scampering in the waves.

Since we were last at Harlyn a sauna has been built in the sand dunes.

The sea provides the cold plunge for scarlet and over-heated Sauna lovers. Hugo and Lola liked to join them for the plunge once they realised it was a leisure activity that involved squealing.

Two long beach walks and an hour or so of van time, enjoying tea and magazines that had been gifted to us, as subscriptions for Christmas gifts, was as arduous as our day got. The temperature dropped once the sun started to set so, putting coats on for the first time of the day, we took a final walk on a much quieter beach.

The last of our festive season traditions completed.