English beaches always surprise me with just how much 'stuff' is on them. In New Zealand, beaches are basically sand + water, maybe a cafe up the road if you're lucky (not counting Mission Bay or Takapuna of course). But at Weymouth, there are a million beach chairs for hire, changing sheds, rental paddle boats and kayaks, organised games of football and volleyball, fairground rides, minigolf and even Punch & Judy is still around. Maybe I'm spoiled by the large amount of sandy real estate on our beaches, but in summer Weymouth is packed almost from edge to edge. Not quite Copacabana, but far beyond what Muriwai looks like even in the peak of summer.
*note* please click through and watch on the vimeo website for HD video quality.
All this action on the beach does make for interesting sight seeing and people watching, and in fact I made the video above to show a bit more what it looks like in person. And for something to do to keep me entertained for an hour or two one afternoon. These pictures look quite different to those from my last visit in the UK winter, which you can see here. I also enjoyed checking out the old fashioned Punch and Judy show, which i guess is quite an idiosyncratic British type thing.
Not much more to say about this really... just a selection of images to show Weymouth in all it's summer glory. Definitely a lot more going on here in summer rather than winter, and a lot more pleasant to walk around and explore. Check out the previous blog post for a quick history lesson about Weymouth including the royal holiday visits from King George, making this one of the first modern tourist destinations. Oh, and potentially the site where the Black Death first reached the UK!