There’s no apparent level the place Winchelsea Beach turns into Pett Level Beach, but it surely’s an extended sweep of steep shingle beach with sand and rockpools at low tide and weathered picket groynes stretching into the water. You can often discover a parking spot on the street proper subsequent to the beach (which is a godsend, notably once you’re lugging all the youngsters’s beach paraphernalia round) or in the small road-side automotive park, and there’s a path of types alongside the prime of the financial institution that takes you all the option to the western finish, Cliff End, the place you’ll discover half-buried tree stumps from the sunken historic forest that was as soon as grew right here. For some additional trivia, it was additionally right here the place David Bowie filmed components of his music video for Ashes to Ashes, and the place the Seventeenth-century warship, HMS Anne, lies buried.
The water is pretty for swimming, and you’ll be able to very fortunately spend a day right here. So what’s for lunch, you ask? Well, it’s the vital lack of amenities (together with no bogs) that’s little doubt what retains this beach crowd-free, however for locals and those that’ve been reeled in by its appeal, there is a fantastic little spot. The New Beach Club is a members’ social membership, not in the Soho House sense, extra a fisherman’s watering gap. It’s tucked into the sea wall, with out of doors tables in the solar and direct entry to the beach, and welcomes well-behaved kids and canine. You don’t should be an area to affix, however you do should pay a £30 annual membership payment to have a beer right here. It’s a stage of funding which can really feel a stretch for a single go to, however one I tackle the chin, partly as a result of I didn’t pack any drinks or snacks the first time we got here so didn’t have a alternative, however now, we enterprise again right here particularly for the battered hake roll from the seafood kitchen, Cockles and Dreams, that does a scrumptious roaring commerce from right here. If you might be certainly an area, you’ll additionally profit from the membership’s weekly quiz and dwell band, however these I’m but to expertise first-hand — I just examine in my members’ e-newsletter that lands in my inbox every month and jogs my memory to counsel a beach day at the weekend.