Cloisters Summer 2007

Relax! Build a Sandcastle.

When I was youngster I raced to the beach, and energetically built sandcastles with a plastic spade and a castle mould bucket. A moat was obligatory, high, thick walls, as many towers as I could muster and a grand entrance elaborately decorated with shells. Dad was on his knees digging furiously with me, and together we would build a grand creation in sand.

On Weymouth beach one year my Dad took me to the sand sculptures which had been a feature of the beach for many years and there for the first time I saw what could really be done with sand. From the 1920’s onwards Fred Darrington was Weymouth’s sand sculptor and he and his work was proudly on show on the beach. He could create anything from sand, and on display at his grandson’s website http://www.sculpturesinsand.com/gallery.html you can see a tiny sample of his work.

Fred carried on until he was 86, but his grandson, Mark Anderson was his apprentice and he has continued since. Twice a year Mark heads off to Italy to participate in the Jesolo International Sand Sculpture Festival Sculture di Sabbia. 20 sculptors are given a theme and 12 weeks to carve their sand sculpture. You can see Mark in action here http://www.sculpturesinsand.com/festivals.html.

There are sand sculpture festivals and contests around the world. This web page on Sandcastle Central reveals a grand display of the imagination of the sand.

What’s the secret? When asked how he made his sculptures, Fred Darrington repiled: “wet sand and a lot of patience.” His grandson gives a little more advice at http://www.sculpturesinsand.com/howto.html. Naturally, the citizens of the US take it to the next level: at Sandcastle Central Toolpages you can find all the tips, tools, resources, DVDs and inspiration you could ever wish to see.

This summer my wife and I will be taking our children to the beach as usual, this time to the glorious golden sands of the west coast of Scotland. Here the beaches are long and the sand is golden and just seems to call on the wind, “come build, create your finest castles,” and armed with buckets and spades we will scan the beach for the perfect pitch. My children have the building bug too, and soon all four of us will be planning our site, marking out the shape and digging down to extract the best soggy sand that’s perfect for our towering constructions. Watch out for us, up to our knees in wet sand, building a castle stately enough for the mightiest of kings.

And with no computer in sight. Ah, joy.

To inspire you, here’s a slide show of photographs from Flickr.