The Gallery; holidays

The theme of this week's Gallery was Holidays and left me wondering what to choose. I have travelled a lot and have literally hundreds of holiday pictures, of all kinds of wonderful places, people and things. How could I possibly pick just one?

So I have posted a picture of the place where we will be going on holiday this August. Anglesey. It may not be the most glamorous holiday destination. It may seem perverse that we are leaving a warm, sunny, seaside town in the US to go to another beach on a colder, frequently rainy seashore in North Wales. But this is the place where we most frequently go on holiday.

The Doctor has relatives who own a house there, and have done for over 50 years. Every summer there is a house party with cousins and friends; there is swimming, sailing, huge meals, fireside chats late at night, high jinks running around the house. The Doctor's mother played on these sands as a child; he himself has been there almost every summer of his life. I started going with him aged 20, and was immediately struck by the magic of the place (despite the fact that the sea was the coldest I had ever swum in). I'll always remember the time we drove up late on a Friday night from London after work and swam at midnight in sea during a heatwave. It was here that, in August 2004, I had the first inkling that I might be pregnant.

We took Littleboy1 there as a six week old baby; he screwed up his eyes against the light on the beach and wailed. A year later, and we were back again, me pregnant again and he loving the beach. Then we went twice with both boys; the picture above was taken in 2008, with their cousin.

So it is to here that we will return for the August bank holiday on our trip to the UK. There will be cousins. There will be sandcastles. There will be beach house lunches. And whether it rains or shines, it will add to our collection of Anglesey memories.