‘I think I’d like a week in Lyme Regis,’ My mum says.

We’re sitting in her kitchen, in August, playing our favourite game – Post Pandemic Fantasy Holidays. Dad has opted for a return to Vienna and I quite fancy Stockholm, but Mum, who has just finished re-reading Persuasion for the third time, decides on Dorset. Having just finished Penelope Lively’s A Stitch in Time, which is also set in Lyme Regis, I can see where she’s coming from. Both of us are dreaming of the classic British seaside holiday – a week of days on the beach, hours spent paddling in freezing breakers, sandwiches with extra sand, shell-collecting and sunburned noses. Since a week in Dorset is off the cards due to Covid, we decide on the next best thing and head to Hayling Island for the afternoon.

Located between Chichester and Portsmouth Harbours and attached to the south coast of England by a road bridge, Hayling Island has five miles of shingle-y seaside shore which has been awarded a European blue flag award for cleanliness and safety (the island is also the birthplace of windsurfing!) Originally dependent on farming, fishing and salt-production, Hayling Island has been popular as a holiday resort since the 1930s and its coastline, which includes a nature reserve, continues to attract beach fans and naturalists alike.

The first thing I notice when we arrive, is a sense of unease. We park just behind the beach, next to the temporarily closed Funland Amusement Park. The looping lines of the roller coasters are empty and the neon signs directing visitors look a little lonely. This much screaming colour should be accompanied by shrieking and bustling, especially now, in late summer. The quiet which surrounds it instead is unnerving and pervasive, a quality which colours our whole visit.

We crunch down over the shingle beach to the grey-green sea, finding that once we are in the water, there is sand between our toes and the water has been warmed by the sun, glimmering through gauzy clouds. My mum and I paddle joyfully, salt stinging our skin and the surf soaking the bottom of our skirts as we try to hold them out of the water. The sun tracks a glittering path over the waves and one or two boats are visible at the silver line where the sea meets the sky. Larger groups of swimmers head further out, only their heads visible, bobbing like seals, as they laugh and splash each other

Beyond the beach, we find a spot to dry our feet and brush off the sand. Here, there are grassy dunes, edged by rows of brightly coloured beach huts, many of them with sunloungers set up outside as people read or doze the quiet afternoon away. Plumes of barbecue smoke rise gently beside some of the huts and beach umbrellas cast pools of shade. Behind the dunes, where the road begins, a few new blocks of flats sit beside a dilapidated Edwardian building, cream paint peeling from its exterior. The hush of the afternoon continues, with only quiet chatter and the screech of seagulls audible above the hum of traffic.

We walk up the beach, watching people building sandcastles and inflating paddle boards. Giant rooks strut between the beach huts and perch on top of closed up, ice-cream kiosks or on climbing frames in the empty children’s playground. The landscape of dunes, soft clouds and grasses has a muted, dream-like quality, contrasting with the brilliant colours of shops and signs. We eat ice cream from paper tubs, sitting outside at a salt-worn table. The flavours are straight out of the eighties, banana split and bright blue bubblegum, served from a retro- looking little shop. I can imagine Neil Gaiman stories being set here – some otherworldly folk horror woven into the fabric of this slightly faded seaside town, or one of Guy Ritchie’s gangsters hiding out here, eating ice-cream and lying low. There’s tension in the contrast between the jolly, colourful, seaside-holiday atmosphere and the hazy, quiet, constantly shifting landscape and it feels a bit eerie, maybe even malevolent (but that might just be the corvids!)

When we get home, there is dry salt around my ankles and sand in my socks. I feel slightly sick from too much sun and too much sugar. I have the same feeling of content exhaustion which come with spending all day at the beach and the bridge of my nose is pink. I’m sure a week at Lyme Regis is nice, but I’ve decided, an afternoon at Hayling Island, with its shingle beaches, its retro ice-cream flavours and its air of cheerful menace, makes for the perfect British Seaside Holiday in miniature.