Choose Your Ground, Then Check the Tide

A good beach picnic starts before you leave the car park. Pick your patch on the day: firm sand near the top of the beach is easier to sit on and easier to brush off than soft, dry sand, and it gives you room to retreat if the water pushes in. If you are on a harbour beach, the strip of shingle below the wall tends to drain well and offers a fine view of the comings and goings — boats, anglers, the odd crabber hauling pots. Just keep clear of slipways, which are for launching, not lounging.

Tide tables are not optional. Even on a neap tide, an hour's inattention can turn a comfortable picnic into a wet-footed retreat. Work out the time of high water, then count backwards. As a rule, settle your rug no lower than the strandline of seaweed and shells, which marks where the last tide reached. If you can see the sea anglers moving back up the beach with their rods, that is your cue too — they read the water better than anyone.

Kit That Earns Its Place in the Boot

You do not need much, but what you take should be tough. A proper cool bag with two frozen ice packs will keep food safe for a few hours, and a flask keeps its heat far longer than you expect. Beyond that:

• A tight-weave wool rug or a picnic blanket with a waterproof backing. Avoid fluffy fleece, which hoovers up sand and refuses to let go.
• A windbreak. Even a low one stops the wind lifting napkins and sanding your sandwiches.
• Reusable lidded tubs rather than cling film, which flaps and fails.
• A large bag for rubbish and a separate one for wet swimwear and damp towels.
• Kitchen roll, a small sharp knife, a bottle opener and a spare carrier bag for sandy shoes.

If you are fishing as well as eating, keep the two apart. Rod rests, bait and mackerel feathers do not belong on the same rug as the pork pie, and a bait box left in the sun will scent the whole picnic. Eat before you bait up, or after you pack the rods away.

Food That Travels and Tastes Better Outdoors

Beach food wants to be hand-held, sturdy and free of anything that drips. A warm Cornish pasty wrapped in foil and then in a tea towel will still be pleasant an hour later, and the pastry crimp gives you a handle. Sausage rolls, a wedge of pork pie, scotch eggs and cold roast chicken all survive a rucksack. Cut sandwiches into halves with the crusts left on; they hold together better in a box.

Skip anything heavy on mayonnaise, which sulks in the sun, and go for butter, mustard or chutney instead. Take a bag of apples, a punnet of strawberries, a bunch of grapes and some cherry tomatoes — fruit that needs no plate and no cutlery. Malt loaf, flapjack and a few squares of dark chocolate round things off nicely and do not mind a bit of warmth. If you have bought smoked mackerel or a dressed crab from a harbour shop that morning, eat it early, keep it cold and do not leave it sitting about.

The Flask, the Cold Drink and the Sweet Finish

Tea from a flask, poured into enamel mugs, is one of the small glories of a British beach. Fill the flask with boiling water first to warm it, tip that out, then add fresh boiling water and let the tea stand for four or five minutes before sealing. Take milk separately in a small screw-top bottle; it will not curdle if it stays cool.

For cold drinks, freeze a couple of bottles of water the night before. They double as ice packs in the cool bag and thaw into perfectly drinkable water by mid-afternoon. Ginger beer, elderflower cordial diluted at home and a flask of chilled soup for a breezy spring day all work beautifully. Avoid glass on the sand.

Setting Up So the Sand Stays Out

Lay your rug on the highest, firmest patch you can find and anchor the windward corners with bags or shoes. Sit on the windward side of the windbreak rather than behind it facing out. Keep the food in its tubs with the lids on between helpings, and put the cool bag in the shade of the windbreak, covered with a towel. Never leave food in direct sun for more than two hours.

Give everyone a designated spot for shoes, and keep a small towel by the edge of the rug for sandy feet. A light dusting of sand on a tight-weave rug brushes off with a hand; on fleece it becomes part of the family. If you are swimming, leave phones, keys and anything else precious in a zipped bag in the middle of the rug, not on the corner where a gust will find it.

Packing Up and Leaving It Clean

Shake the rug well away from the group, fold it backing-side out, and give the tubs a quick wipe before they go back in the bag. Take every scrap of rubbish home, including fruit peel and crusts — gulls do not need feeding and a beach that smells of food attracts them fast. Check the ground where you sat for bottle tops, hair bands and kirby grips, which are the usual casualties.

If you have been fishing, take line and bait packaging with you too. Coiled line and plastic bags are the two things that do real harm to the birds and the seals that work these coasts. Leave the beach as you found it, and the next picnic there will be just as good.