Foreign forays were off in 2020 – but staycation surprises revealed the very origin of Britain, and its people.
We're sand powder hounds.
There are only four sections of sandy beaches in South-East England – so we visited them all; about 70 miles east, south-east, south and south-west of London.
A STONY SURPRISE
I picked up a dark rock in a thin white casing, looking like the end of a dog bone, in white chalk cliff-ringed Thanet, Kent, 70 miles east of London.
A week later, as Leo and I munched blackberries by a ploughed field at the very top of one of the Chiltern Hills, 30 miles west of London, I picked up the same rock.
It was so sculpted, it seemed only the sea could have shaped it.
Baffling the friends we were visiting, I announced my sudden theory the rock was formed by a sea which covered the Chilterns five million years ago.
I was only 140 million years out. More accurate than some of my journalism stories, you may say.
Now guess where, on today's map of the world, the Chilterns – and the rest of England – was when this rock formed?
Tunisia; 1,500 miles south in North Africa.
Yes, that sounds bonkers – but it turns out England was near the South Pole 600 million years ago. (Scotland was on the Equator, with mountains as high as Everest)
So why does South-East England have stone rather than the sandy beaches common in the rest of Britain?
Because the region is made of mainly soft chalk (squashed shells). Its grains are so fine that, when eroded, they are washed away or become mud.
To get sand, you need two things.
One - harder rocks.
London and around does have some hard rocks – the 'flint nodules' I found. They are sparsely dotted through chalk and, despite being formed from squidgy squashed algae, a chemical reaction made them so hard they were the Stone Age axe of choice.
And two - a lot of time.
Flint has only been exposed since yesterday in geological terms (when a huge flood created the English channel 225,000 years ago).
That's why flints is still shingle or pebble on beaches.
They will be eroded to give South-East England sandy beaches in about 100 million years.
But remember your jacket if you fancy a day at the beach then – as Britain will be near the North Pole. (We move north-east 2cm per year).
TREASURES OF SAND AND SEA
Bolivia's famous perspective-warping Uyini salt flat lakes (the best place I've ever visited) look a bit like a beach in West Sussex.
You read that right.
The mile-long, still low tide pools at West Wittering, facing the Isle of Wight, stretch to close to the horizon and reflect the sky.
A bit like a mega natural infinity pool.
It's disorientating as, without a horizon beyond a reflective lake – as in Bolivia – it feels like you're inside an absurd painting of blue and white whisps.
And it was from abstract to adrenalin as waves rolling over an offshore sandbar enabled a 100-metre paddleboard surf (ok, on my knees).
But South-East England's best beach is Camber Sands, East Sussex.
The vast and spectacular three-mile sweep of sand is backed by a mile of 30 meter-high dunes (37 seconds to run up the steepest path with Leo on my shoulders; less to drag him down on a picnic rug).
The little adventurer's delight at the swift incoming tide swallowing sandcastles was exceeded only by his sheer joy at digging up 'silver' pirate treasure coins – as said incoming tide rather caught out Daddy and gushed around our calves as I questioned what plonker would have buried treasure there.
Captain Hook had fortunately been on his day off that day; and not for the only time during a summer of finding buried beach hordes.
Explosions and mushroom clouds from the direction of nearby Dungeness nuclear power station threatened to cast an acid cloud over our day. They turned out to be from an Army firing range.
Camber's dunes didn't exist 350 years ago, until the beach blew inland. It created a beautiful place, unfairly maligned by its Hi-De-Hi-style Pontins holiday chalets.
You don't have to go six hours to Cornwall for cliff-backed sandy bays with rock stacks.
Thanet, Kent, 90 minutes from London, has bays, notably Botany Bay; the classic seaside fishing village Broadstairs; upmarket Ramsgate and kitschy Margate, where I literally stood in the footsteps of my great-great grandfather outside the guesthouse he once owned.
The beaches are best at high tide. Low tide reveals dark rocks and seaweed, including one particular sandal-sucking, calf-deep swamp we were compelled to cross en route to a(nother) of Capt Hook's misplaced treasure stashes.
We watched the wind blow cumulus clouds along the coasts of France and Essex, each 35 miles away, and Belgium, 80 miles away.
Storm Ellen whipped up record wind power generation as 300 towering 100 metre-high wind turbines span at three of the world's biggest wind farms a few miles offshore.
Appropriately enough, we stayed in a 200-year-old windmillers' house.
'Mudeford Spit' is not a likely name for a millionaires' playground.
But even the Bahamas' famous Paradise Island was once Hog Island pig farm.
Mudeford's wooden beach huts in Dorset stand on a 30 metre-wide strip with tufty dune grass and a sandy beach on one side, and a calm harbour on the other.
It's a Castaway feel – but huts cost £300,000, yachts dot the harbour and jetskis bounce through waves.
£100,000 luxury caravans stand by the next beach.
And five giant £500million cruise ships lay anchored offshore (mothballed from Southampton's port due to Covid).
Round the headland, Bournemouth's seven-mile stretch of sand felt luxurious underfoot.
The fact Nati swam just before October tells you how nice the sea was.
COUNTRYSIDE CLASSICS
Britain's most famous natural view is arguably where the sea slices off the end of the South Downs hills at Seven Sisters, East Sussex, exposing 100 metre-high brilliant white cliffs.
This view is not from any tourist spot, but down an unsignposted track by an old barn. It overlooks four miles of cliffs, old coastguard cottages and a New Zealand-style pebble-bottomed valley floor through which a river cuts an S-shaped path.
Another classic English countryside panorama greeted my brother Dom and I one evening near Milton Keynes, 50 miles north of London.
With a golden sun low in the sky ahead of us, we cycled downhill along the edge of a ripe field of swaying wheat, past oak trees overhanging hedges.
All of Britain once looked like Hampshire's New Forest.
I went to university down the road, but 20 years ago it was 10p-a-pint nights rather than 800-year-old trees that had my attention.
Now I love trees, not Foster's. Leo's cedar cone and conker hunting has reignited my arbor instincts.
The New Forest's moss-clad native oak and beech trees are western Europe's best example of the ancient woodland that once carpeted the continent.
Semi-wild ponies and wild pigs roam. Immense non-native pines stretch skyward. Purple heather heathland fills cleared gaps in the forest.
South-East-England's hills are the chalky ridges of the Chilterns, Kent Weald and North and South Downs.
The River Way flows out of Surrey's North Downs in a serene scene.
Had Toad, Ratty and Mole boated past on the reed and weeping willow-lined river through cows' meadows, I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.
The North Downs' steep and grassy southerly side provides awesome hikes with a view, and Leo and my favourite winter sledging spots.
Its gentle northerly slope covers most of south London, steering the Thames past classic river beaches (with easily-swimmable water warmer than the sea) in Thames Ditton, Teddington and near Richmond; home to the deer park with a lockdown car-and-adult-bikes ban, making it exercise heaven for Leo (bike), Nati (running) and me (skating).
INVADERS AND HEROES
We'd learnt the history of Britain's land – but what did we discover about its people?
Those strong winds in Thanet, Kent, helped scupper Caesar's first invasion of Britannia there, wrecking ships.
Hunting dogs and slaves were the main exports from the most important port in Britain at the time – Hengistbury Head, Dorset, then inland on a river as low sea levels allowed Roman soldiers to wade to the Isle of Wight.
Wine and olives were the main imports – and still are; Mudeford's millionaires are next door to the headland, now a hikers' haven on the coast after sea levels rose.
It turns out a sneaky trick was how William conquered England's Anglo-Saxons in 1066 – in Battle, East Sussex.
The French feigned withdrawing mid-battle, Harold's army ran after them but in doing so spread out, and the French counter-attacked.
The Normans' most obvious relics are their stout 800-year-old churches, looking like mini-castles and complete with ramparts.
Possibly Britain's best-preserved medieval town, Tudor 600-year-old houses, black-timbered with whitewashed panels, stand wonkily over the cobblestones of Rye, East Sussex.
Leo was unimpressed, insisting on stopping to make Lego.
One of William's knights built Leeds Castle, Kent, but the famous current castle is a (beautiful) fake – built only 200 years ago, 300 years after castles' defences became almost worthless.
Repelling archers and pouring boiling oil on swordsmen clambering up ladders was one thing – but gunpowder and cannons were quite another.
A crooked funnel on top of a cute circular building in Kent means it was an oast house, used to fire and dry hops to make beer 200 years ago. Beer heritage remains strong here – with stacks of local breweries.
On the last day of our holiday, something wonderful happened in the clear blue skies over Seven Sisters' cliffs.
A purring Hurricane Second World War plane banked and dived, rehearsing for the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, when dogfights laced these skies south of London as brave men fought for the freedom of our land.
DIFFERENT IS NOT BETTER
Let's be honest. Brits like to say other countries are better than ours.
We say we go abroad for holidays because the weather, beaches and food are better than here.
It's a novelty to be in another country and culture. But other countries are actually different, not necessarily better, than Britain.
We should appreciate Britain more – and be proud to acknowledge it. Who needs a passport to have a holiday when you have this on your doorstep?
