Fit in my 40s: Hit the beach to swim? Forget that! Swap the noodles for shuttlecocks

It turns out my kids have got really good at badmintonI should preface this by saying that the best, most obvious exercise to do on a beach holiday is to swim in the sea. It has all the muscular wonders of a pool, with the additional benefit of usually not being warm enough. Swimming uses every major muscle group in your body, but sea-swimming takes it up a notch by engaging your brain: the risk, the infinity, the connection with nature. It’s a beautiful thing, which my kids point-blank refuse to do.But it turns out they’ve got really good at badminton. The first I heard of it was when the oldest came back from school boasting that they’d had to change the winner-stays-on rule because he was just too good. Hoping to parlay this into a holiday activity, I bought a dirt-cheap beach badminton set. Continue reading...