Felixstowe Seafront – Holiday Highlights

We just spent five days staying at a caravan park in Felixstowe, mainly to visit James’s family and partly because we needed a break! It was a great holiday and we spent a lot of our time out and about, enjoying the Felixstowe seafront.

Landguard Nature Reserve & Felixstowe Port

Felixstowe is a major port for Britain, with huge container ships coming in & out of port, and massive equipment for moving around the containers. We find the ports fascinating rather than ugly, so we took a walk in the nature reserve next to our caravan park, which had a great view of the huge cranes, as well as lots of muddy puddles for the kids to jump in!

Beaches

Felixstowe has long stretches of sandy beaches, with pebbles and seaweed to investigate. We knew that visiting in October meant we wouldn’t be spending whole mornings at the beach, so we didn’t bother with buckets & spades, but that didn’t stop the girls from digging in the sand with their hands, proudly making piles of sand. Georgie even made a sand angel at one point, and Lydia loved to play with the pebbles.

We visited the beaches several times. As so many things at Felixstowe are located along the seafront, it made sense to allow the girls some time to play with the sand and enjoy watching the waves, whenever we had good enough weather and time to spare. 

Martello Park & South Kiosk

Behind the South Beach there is a new development being built, in the area of the old Martello Tower “P”, which is an old small defensive fort on the coastline. As part of the new development, they have created a fantastic park just behind the beach. The park has a mixture of open spaces and seating areas, with loads of different play areas for the children to enjoy.

For older kids, one end of the park had an assault course style play area, and for the younger ones there was a giant sand pit, and the usual assortment of swings, climbing frames, and so on. The play equipment was all really nice with lots of wood used – it fit in really well with the seafront setting.

In addition to all this was a fab little water splash park which was a surprising hit. Our kids have never enjoyed jets of water being shot at them; even the fantastic Splash Park at Legoland’s Duplo Valley failed to get them to embrace that sort of water play. In the middle of October, in their wellies and full waterproofs, however, they went nuts with it. They set the sequence of jets off about 5 or 6 times, delighting in splashing about and thrusting their hands into the water spray. Watching them take such delight in the water, and playing together in it, was such a special moment for us.

After all this play a decent refreshment was of course required, in the shape of an ice cream for each of the kids, and hot drinks and cake for us. We bought these at South Kiosk which is a fairly new business that has opened up in this new Felixstowe park, serving ice cream, hot drinks, cakes and sausage rolls.

The coffee cake I chose was amazing, and it was one of the best mochas I have tasted, so it was a fantastic discovery. We will definitely be returning there on future visits and if you are ever in the area I urge you to check them out! It was such a treat, and so nice to see something like that open out of season. Highly recommended!

Amusement Arcades

For the first time ever, this holiday we took Georgie and Lydia into an amusement arcade, gave them a pot full of coppers, and introduced them to the wonder that is 2p machines. Felixstowe has a string of arcades along the sea front, all eager to take your money while you shelter from a rain shower, of which there were several during our stay.

It was hilarious how quickly the children cottoned onto the concept, Lydia in particular. After watching her big sister play on the machines for a few minutes, Lydia was quick to ask to be let down from her pushchair so she could join in the fun. Georgie even managed to drag in her Grandfather to play with her on the Thursday. She was so sweet, dragging a stack of three plastic stools in one hand while she moved from one machine to another, whilst clutching a pot of change in the other.

One of the arcades had a miniature carousel that the girls loved, so we treated them to a few goes on that, which put us firmly into the good books. I even managed to win a cuddly monkey on the grab machines for Lydia, our resident soft toy addict.

After all the 2ps were spent, James and I had a spirited match of air hockey (I won, of course), with the girls joining in too. Georgie spotted the motorbike game, climbing onto one of the bikes with great enthusiasm, and her softie Daddy paid for them to have a quick go. As for me, I couldn’t resist a quick go on the pinball machine – I love them!

Well, that’s it – our Felixstowe seafront adventures! I have a few more highlights to share from the holiday, so keep an eye out for those in the next week or so.