The Fine Art of Sandcastle Building (And a Wild Seaside Feast)
- Martin Hesp
- Aug 16
- 8 min read
It’s been a great year for… Well, there are lots of things the hot weather has been good for, but let’s say at the start that five heatwaves and an ongoing drought have resulted in seriously bad news for many people. However, there are times when you have to look on the sunny side of life, even if the planet’s climate is getting too hot and scary. And this summer has been a great season for sandcastle building alongside other seaside activities—things you can enjoy if the rain isn’t falling in sheets and if a gale isn’t blowing.
Which has so often been the case during the past few decades. So let’s be light-hearted while we can.
Inspiration at Lee Bay
I was reminded of the art of sandcastle building one day this week when we took our grandchildren to the little North Devon inlet of Lee Bay, just west of Lynmouth. I always think of it as Exmoor’s best beach and recently recommended it to an old friend who was holidaying locally and who wanted to take his grandchildren somewhere where they could join in with his great passion for building sandcastles.
Tim Bannerman is a friend who, in some ways, changed my whole way of thinking way back when I was in my late teens. For it was this poet, actor and all-round-good-chap who did more than anyone else to convince me that life is for living to the full and not a thing you should worry about or fill with angst.
Many years after I first met him (and by the time we both had kids of our own) he sent me an amazing 5,000-word treatise on the art of sandcastle building, which amused me then much as it does now. Because it somehow underlines the fact that we can all do more in the way of genuine celebration—even when it comes to something simple like sitting on a beach.
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The Philosophy of Ephemeral Palaces
In this case, most people envisage a plastic beach bucket when they think of sandcastles… Fill it with the necessary granular substance, turn it upside down, and dump it onto the beach: job done. They might put a plastic flag on it or even dig a moat around it, but that’s more-or-less as far as most sandcastle building goes.
Tim does much more. He builds huge fantasy palaces whenever he’s on some foreshore with the necessary ingredient—i.e. sand that has a kind of sticking quality to it, especially when damp. As I say, he even penned a grand essay on the subject, treating the humble seaside mound as a metaphor for human existence.
Which amused me because what I thought was this… Sand equals loose grains that fall apart. Castle: a building of strength. Conundrum: why is it that people are obsessed by the mad idea of forming the latter out of the former?
As Tim points out, building a proper sandcastle is a race against the sun, the moon, and the pitiless, devouring sea. You wait for the moment the tide ebbs to reveal that perfect, flat expanse of sand. Then you set to work cutting away, shaping, carving, and tunnelling until a proud, noble edifice stands ready for King Arthur and Guinevere to take up residence.
Then the tide comes back. By the next morning: nothing. Just flat, unblemished sand.
“Why do it?” asks Tim. “Because it is like life. We start small, we build our lives, our careers, our little towers of achievement. And in the end, the tide comes in. But while that castle was there, caught in that last flash of the sun, my goodness it was arresting! Touching, romantic, funny, poignant, theatrical. It is a fairy story, a pop-up book, pure theatre.“It is imagination,” he continues. “A stage whose Jean Cocteau backdrop and chiaroscuro mystery lacks only you to fill, bestride or strut and fret your hour upon it. Infinitely complex, just like life—given half a chance.”
Tim even tackles the matter of architectural style, warning against going “over the top in some über Baroque, soppy Disney kind of way,” suggesting instead that a hint of Gothic, Palladian, or Gaudí adds a certain je ne sais quoi.
“Just a quick thought: the ‘slightly ruined 18th-century folly look’ can come in quite handy,” he writes, recalling William Beckford, whose 300-foot-high Fonthill Abbey collapsed into rubble 12 years after it was built. “So you can always say that your castle has been dedicated to the great, if foolish, Mr Beckford in anticipation that it might come to a similar fate.”
The Master Rules
For those looking to turn Tim’s philosophy into practice, he offers a few rules:
The Sand: Test your beach. Dig a shovel-full to see if it holds together when squeezed and check it has depth. Grit or shallow rock will break your heart.
The Tools: Ditch the flimsy plastic. You need real, flat-bottomed and pointy metal spades, plus proper garden spades for the heavy lifting. “Buckets,” Tim warns, “are good for the under-fours, but not much else if you want to avoid the Tommy Cooper fez-look to your castle.”
The Technique: Pack it down. Roll up your sleeves and build a pile nearly as high as yourself. Pack it down firmly with hands and feet, then carve down vertically into the mound using a spade. For authentic crenellations? Press a finger down at regular intervals along the top of the wall.
Secrets from the National Sandcastle Competition
Tim isn’t the only one taking the craft to heroic lengths. No one quite knows why the British are so crazy about sandcastles, but a competition to see who could build the best was for a time one of the most popular annual events on the West Country coast. I was sent to Croyde beach one year to report on the weird, wonderful, and ephemeral creations of something called the National Sandcastle Competition, which was held to raise vital funds for the North Devon Hospice.
Lacking a specialist sandcastle competition correspondent, the Western Morning News asked me to go along and get tips by the bucket-and-spade load from a world-beating team. Staff from North Devon Homes had won the title multiple times, and their secret weapons went well beyond the traditional wooden spade:
Secret Weapon Number One: A plant sprayer full of water. Nothing glues sand together quite like a fine mist, especially on a hot day when finer sand features dry out and blow away in the breeze.
Secret Weapon Number Two: Professional plasterer’s floats and specialised trowels. When I joined a key team member on the sand, we weren’t building turrets or barbicans—we were carving an eight-foot-long hippopotamus complete with neck rolls and water ripples. “We don’t tend to get many actual castles in the competition,” my guide admitted with a shrug. “It tends to be all sorts.”
Secret Weapon Number Three: Military planning. The team would first of all plot-out their assigned seven-metre pitch onto a strict grid before even stepping onto the strand, assigning dedicated diggers to stockpile wet sand before the fine detail work begins.
So, before this sunny summer draws to a close, why not have a go? Take along a reasonably good spade and a hand-held plant-sprayer and you could find yourself impressing the entire crowded beach. You could even inspire an interest in Gothic or Palladian architecture in your children or grandchildren.
Beach Foraging: A Wild Shoreline Feast
I add this to the general beach-experience mix knowing that environmentalists will groan at the idea—but you can forage for delicious food if you’re on the right kind of seashore and the waters are unpolluted. Which does translate to many of the West Country’s more remote shores…
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“For me collecting seafood is a real treat,” a keen beach-forager once told me. “The London people were always very keen on this sort of thing—jellied eels and so on—but that was a different generation when there were shellfish bars outside pubs on Sunday mornings. That’s all gone now—but I can go and get it for myself.
“This is my idea of heaven,” he said, as we decanted cooking stoves, chopping boards, sieves and other paraphernalia onto rocks bordering the outgoing tide. “You go to Brittany and you’ll find little girls and grannies and aunties so on with baskets hung over their shoulders all raking away for razor fish, limpets, mussels and winkles—and sometimes there’s nothing left.
“But it’s amazing how big they all are here,” he said grabbing a handful of wild mussels on a wild north Cornish beach. “There’s no problem of over-collecting on this shore.”
With that, off we went jabbing this and hoicking that—we even climbed a lower part of the cliff to pick the rock samphire and sea-beet which would act as our vegetable ration.
Which spurs me to make a very important point: do not harvest plants like these by grabbing tufts and ripping them from the ground. Pick off the tops with care—you’re almost pruning them. That way you won’t be damaging the plants.
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The Art of the Limpet
My own favourite hunter-gatherer act of the day was levering limpets. Armed with a short stubby knife you must approach these stubborn creatures with caution—bump or jab them without accuracy and you’ve had it—the limpet will go into a kind of superglue defensive state of suction, and you won’t have a chance of getting it from the rock.
The element of surprise is their undoing. Make a quick, accurate lunge, pushing the knife between its shell and the rock, and—ping—that’s another muscle-bound wonder for the seafood stew.
I did try limpets when I was a kid. It was not a success. Think: gristle, unchewable seafood chewing gum.
My old pal was aware of their muscular reputation—which is why he asked us to search for the limpets first so they could go into a pan of bubbling white wine while we went off hunting for the other shellfish. We simply washed any sand off their undersides and chucked them in—shell and all—and there they simmered for the best part of 45 minutes and were absolutely delicious.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What makes Lee Bay near Lynmouth good for sandcastles? Lee Bay on the Exmoor coast is a sheltered cove where the ebbing tide uncovers clean, cohesive sand with good depth—ideal for compacting and carving before the Atlantic tide returns.
How do you stop sandcastles from drying out and blowing away? A garden pressure plant sprayer filled with sea water is the secret used by championship teams. Lightly misting the structure keeps delicate details damp and bound together against the sun and sea breeze.
How do you harvest and cook limpets so they aren't tough? Prise them cleanly off the rock using a sudden, low strike with a blunt knife before they clamp down. To overcome their muscular texture, wash the shells and simmer them gently in bubbling white wine, garlic, or stock for at least 40 to 45 minutes.
How should you forage rock samphire and sea-beet sustainably? Never pull wild greens up by the root. Use a small knife or your fingers to pinch off the tender top shoots only—effectively pruning the plant so it continues to grow.
