A Late Summer stroll to Player's Beach

Despite my best intentions, it has been many weeks since my last blog post. The rest of the website is now much more up to date than it was, but the blogs have been ignored somewhat. 

As a result, I find myself writing about a trip to the beach in the August sunshine whilst freezing cold and rubbing my hands together like a GP about to examine your chest.

This summer was a good one for us on the Isle of Wight, in the middle of 'unprecedented times' (Trademark: every journalist in the UK). 

One of the last days of summer was spent at Player's Beach, which is the closest beach to Binstead. As far as I can see, it isn't marked on Ordnance Survey or Google maps as a separate beach to Appley, but various online sources call it Player's Beach. Presumably the name relates to the golf course nearby rather than because it is popular with flirty lads.

As far as I can remember, I'd not been to Player's Beach although there's always the possibility that my 8th birthday party was held there and I've completely forgotten about it. 

We parked outside Holy Cross Church in Binstead. There were about four parking spaces, so I wouldn't say the beach is ready for a massive invasion of people but it's not exactly one of the most famous or most popular Isle of Wight beaches.

We walked for about 10 minutes down a pretty path which includes part of the round the Island walking route. 

That's not us carrying those huge rucksacks in the photo, although we do tend to go rather overboard and prepare for every possible weather when we head for the beach.

The beach itself is lovely at low tide, with a fair amount of sand and lots of tiny jellyfish when we visited. At high tide, there's not a lot of beach so I wouldconsult the tide tables before you visit.

A heavily tanned guy was sat on a post reading the Daily Mirror with his top off in the sunshine. I reckon he'd been sat there since 1974 but I didn't check the date on the paper.

Social distancing was easily achieved with only about five people on the beach, so we sat down and ate our picnic before a quick paddle and a walk back to the car.