It turns out my kids have got really good at badminton
I should preface this by saying that the best, most obvious exercise to do on a beach holiday is to swim in the sea. It has all the muscular wonders of a pool, with the additional benefit of usually not being warm enough. Swimming uses every major muscle group in your body, but sea-swimming takes it up a notch by engaging your brain: the risk, the infinity, the connection with nature. It’s a beautiful thing, which my kids point-blank refuse to do.
But it turns out they’ve got really good at badminton. The first I heard of it was when the oldest came back from school boasting that they’d had to change the winner-stays-on rule because he was just too good. Hoping to parlay this into a holiday activity, I bought a dirt-cheap beach badminton set.