Beside the lakeside

The last two days have been really hot and humid, so yesterday evening we decided to head for the beach. North Beach is our nearest Provincial Park, 10 minutes' drive away. We got there at 5pm and I suppose there may have been a total of 50 people on the beach, which is a natural sandbar about a mile in length. The water of Lake Ontario was really warm (which was not the case a month ago, when we first visited the park and only the kids braved the water), so we all went for a swim.

You have to pay to get into the park ($11.00 per vehicle per day), but you can get a seasonal pass for $80 (about £10 each for our family), which represents good value and ensures that we go there regularly! We couldn't get over how quiet the beach was - contrasting it with any sandy beach on an August evening in the UK when the temperature is hitting 28°C (82°F). We also realised that we'd never all been swimming off a beach at the same time before: in the UK one of us always ended up sitting on the beach because we'd be worried about people nicking our car keys/money/phones. We had no such worries last night and it was really liberating. The only strange thing is that you're swimming in fresh water, when the lake is so big that it feels like you're at the seaside.