Most people seem to like the beach. Even countries not particularly well endowed with such accessories produce whole crops of people prepared to travel the globe for the opportunity to lie on the sand. Who doesn't like the beach? Colobus monkeys (the sand gets in their fur), US Marines (too many pillboxes) and me.
Aesthetically I like the beach just fine. Nothing sets off a coastline quite so well as a strip of yellow white sand separating the green land from the blue ocean. Not only does it stop the land from getting soggy but it prevents the planet from making a fashion faux pas as well. I enjoy looking at the beach on television, in pictures and even from a comfortable chair in a cafe or bar a few metres away from the genuine article.
I love the salt laden air, the constantly moving but reassuringly permanent ocean and the gleaming beauty of that gleaming, enticing strip of sand. What I don't like is actually being on the beach itself. A beach is sand and sand is stone. For every hour of fun frolicking on the beach you have to spend another two hours scraping powdered rock out of every orifice in your body; possibly longer depending on how enthusiastic the frolicking was.
I don't know why humans have this urge to disport themselves on damp, crumbled stone. It's not like we couldn't find more comfortable places to sprawl. Yet the beach keeps pulling us back. This leads me to suspect that certain modern theories of evolution are quite wrong. We're not descended from apes, we're actually descended from seals. That would certainly explain our beach fetish. We head for the sand because some tiny race memory tells us that if we don't we're going to get eaten by killer whales. A seal based heritage would also help explain walrus moustaches (sorry) and our predilection for seafood.
The other issue is people. Thanks to our seal heritage people love the beach. That means on any good day for the beach you will find it packed with enough people to make the population of Bangladesh comment on how crowded the place seems. If you do discover an uncrowded beach it is probably just downstream from a chemical weapons plant or possibly you have just been shipwrecked. If the latter then you will probably be spending so much time worrying about dying of thirst or starvation that you won't be able to truly appreciate how lucky you are to find an unspoiled beach. Although no doubt some beach goers would consider the price worth paying.
The only other option is to go on a day that isn't really suited for the beach. Enjoy squatting shivering on your towel as an icy wind lashes the rain straight off the ocean into your face. I'll be across the road in the dry having a nice cup of coffee.
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