If it’s happening Between the Tides there’s plenty of opportunity to get the sand between your toes at the Walton Arts Festival, 20th-22nd September.
You can start with Saturday morning the Sandcastle Competition when there are prizes for the best sandcastle or sand sculpture. Organised by Frinton Rotary, you can register from 9.30am from at M&M’s beach hut 100 on The Leas promenade and begin building at 10am. Judging is at noon and prizegiving is at 12.30pm.
Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult, but you can work as an individual or as a team.
Begin Sunday with Gong with the Wind and welcome the sunrise from 6.40am as Her & Her are under the pier with gong and saxophone until 7.30. (It’s got to be that early because the tide is out!) Then creep away for an hour or two for some breakfast, but get back to the pier for 10am when Catherine Shrubshall will be performing her Odes to the Ocean – live music against a background soundtrack.
Then, what a choice, you can join the WALLY’s (Walton Against Lazy Littering) and see some of what you gather transformed into art with Jane Stewart doing cyanotype printing. That’s on Walton Beach from 10am to noon.
Or… Sally Child organises Sand Ball Making in the Groyne Gallery between 9.30am and noon. She quite rightly calls Walton Beach the world’s largest gallery.
And…from 11.30am, Rose Lawes of Tendring Community Writers will be Writing in the Sand.
After that beach based extravaganza there’s just time to brush off the sand, grab a bite and make the most of the art and music in the town while the tide is high