Crabbing, punching and general thievery - a traditional day out at the British seaside

School holidays, kids are bored, bit of sun forecast - obviously lets head off to the seaside for a bit of traditional British wholesome family fun.
North Wales is easiest for us to get to so head off on a two-stop strategy - Conwy for crabbing combined with Llandudno for the pier and kids fun.
Crabbing at Conwy was hopeless, apparently if you go there at low tide there is no sea and consequently no crabs to catch. Didn't stop us trying though. And it didn't stop the gulls trying to nick the bait. We won this battle against the gulls but it wouldn't be long before they got their revenge!

Incoming!

Smallest house in Great Britain: where do they poo dad?

Onto Llandudno and time to show the kids how to have fun without PS4s and tablets. First stop, good old Punch and Judy and get the kids properly grounded in the Victorian values of beating anybody you like repeatedly over the head with a truncheon.

 Suitably pumped up we moved onto the pier and found a modern day battery powered inflatable donut version of the old dodgem cars. At 3 tokens for 3 minutes or as you might say £3 for 3 minutes, or £60 per hour, they were comfortably more expensive than renting a Mercedes for £29 a day  They did look fun though and if there wasn't a big sign saying "No Adults" I would have had a go myself! The kids thought they were free as they were only using tokens and they weren't even too upset at dropping the odd token onto the rocks through the gaps in the pier. Until I made them walk all the way back off the pier, along the beach onto the slippery, jagged rocks and look for the tokens for two hours until the tide came in (not really, but I did think about it!).

"Can I have another go dad?"
"Not until you've got a job son"

By now the tide had really come in and MBW went back to the car to get the crabbing kit whilst I took the kids into the amusements for a proper lesson in finances. Armed with a tenner each they set about losing it with gusto. The good old tipping point games were the main focus mixed in with a bit of air hockey and it wasn't too long before they were back looking very pleased with themselves but asking for more cash. Rebuffed on the cash front they were keen to show me how much they had won with a handful of red tickets, about 40 each.

So we headed of to cash them in and immediately they were eyeing up all the big stuff on the top shelves. I pointed out that a small teddy bear was about 1,000 tickets and they would need to look on lower shelves. As their eyes went down shelf by shelf looking at how many tickets they would need they eventually arrived at the lowest shelf in the display counter in front of us and saw the smallest packets of sweets that Haribo make. I know from making goody bags for their birthday parties these are about 10p each from the discount shops. They counted their tickets (again) and realised they could have 2 packets each.
To say they were crestfallen is to understate it more than a tad. And to rub it in, er... I mean help them understand the value of money I asked how much they had spent to get those tickets and what they could have got with that money instead. Slowly, the er... penny dropped and they realised, momentarily at least, that they could have got many more teeth rotting goodies for their money elsewhere. To cheer them up and show them adults are rubbish with money too I bought 4 donuts with no filling for £3. You can get 10 custard filled donuts at our Coop for £1, you know.
Smiles were slowly returning as the admittedly yummy, warm and fresh donuts were gobbled up. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones who appreciate a warm, fresh donut and a one-legged seagull swooped to snatch half of Emily's clean out of her hand. To say she was shocked and upset, not to mention hurt where the gull had nipped her finger, is to put it mildly. However, finishing her mother's half eaten donut seemed to take her mind off it.

10 CUSTARD donuts for £1 in our local Coop

A devious one-legged donut fan

 Judging by the considerable crowds and difficulty in parking at both Llandudno and Conwy the British seaside resorts aren't completely dead just yet. All in all a fun day was had by all, possible less so for the crabs that MBW finally caught after the errant tide came in  .....