How old is too old to wear a bikini?

Plus a lovely long walk, a nice new hotel, the world's best bread, some telly, and does anyone have any dog rucksack recommendations?

Ha ha, got you! Trick question. The answer, these days, is never too old, according to most people. We can wear whatever we like, any age we like, and anyone saying different can go whistle.

That said, I definitely feel like I’m moving into my swimsuit era. Like, I’d prefer to wear a swimsuit over a bikini. Not because I’m ashamed of my stomach (on a good day, anyway), or believe I should cover it up. Not because I turned 40 in February and therefore now have to obey some mysterious and unspoken rule that I must only wear a Boden one-piece for the rest of my life. I just feel happier in a swimsuit, more comfortable. Although I’m also quite partial to a high-waisted, sort of 50s-esque bikini. See Ava Gardner below, who doesn’t seem to understand how slides work, but looks pretty terrific all the same.

Is it this way?

So, since I’m going on holiday next week, I thought it might be time to rootle through my swimsuit drawer. Let’s see. What do we have here? An old Speedo swimming costume I bought when I had a bad back and decided to join the local swimming pool in an effort to improve it, until I swum past a piece of turd and decided my back wasn’t that bad after all. A black Boden one-piece which I do like very much but has done at least a couple of summers now. An old pair of M&S bikini bottoms but no top. A bikini top that dates from the last millennium but no bottoms, and some neon pink leg warmers bought ages ago for a fancy dress party. Really useful on the beach.

According to a piece in last month’s American Elle which made me laugh quite a lot, this year’s swimwear trends include nautical stripes (which feels a bit ‘Florals? For spring?’), animal print, cutout shapes, ‘subtle bling’ (swimming costumes or bikinis with metallic bits on them), and, er, rosettes, so you can look like you’re on holiday and have also come first at the local Pony Club. Look, here are examples of all them so you don’t embarrass yourself in Mykonos.

If you want to see where they’re from HERE’S the link to the piece. I’m not someone who follows swimwear trends much because I simply want something that fits and doesn’t give me thrush if I wear it for more than half an hour, but each to their own.

To that end, I darted into Peter Jones last week because I happened to be passing and thought that the swimwear section would be relatively quiet on a Tuesday morning. I grabbed multiple items - a Seafolly swimsuit, a stripey high-waisted bikini (nautical stripes - get me!) and a few other bits I now can’t remember because the long and short of it was they were all AWFUL. The indignity of standing in a brightly-lit cubicle, trying to heave a swimming costume over my knickers came flooding back. Urgh, hateful.

‘None of them. I’m so sorry to be that person,’ I told the woman manning the changing room, handing her every single item back.

‘That’s alright,’ she replied, a touch wearily.

Here seems to be the trouble with the majority of swimming costumes and bikinis I come across - the bottom ‘area’ is DEEPLY unflattering, the top leaves a faintly unsightly ‘bra bulge’ (you know, that bit between your armpit and bosom), the material feels cheap and practically see through, they don’t offer enough support, and the straps are uncomfortable (especially some halterneck tops which can make the back of my neck hurt after wearing them for a while??). ALSO, I’m nervous about anything white because I’m very slapdash when it comes to putting on suncream and the old Ambre Solaire can turn white straps/costumes etc a bit yellow.

On the train home from Peter Jones I genuinely googled ‘swimsuits for tall people’, in an effort to find something that didn’t cut my bottom in half (sorry! But tall women will understand this!). Turns out Next does swimwear specifically for tall women, who knew? So I ordered a couple of things from there (notably the one on the left, below, which IS a bit white admittedly but I’ll just have to be more careful with the suncream), plus another swimming costume from Sezane because I ❤️ Sezane and I essentially wanted to look like the woman in the picture on the right below.

£32 from Next on the left; £100 from Sezane on the right

Meanwhile, I’m also lusting after the below (the stripey one on the left) from Hunza G, but I simply cannot bring myself to spend £185 on a swimming outfit. And I tell you the other annoying thing when shopping for bikinis, and that is places that show a price and you think ‘Oh that’s not so bad’, and then you realise it’s the price just for the bottom or the top. I’m looking at Reformation here, who have a cheerful red bikini (high-waisted! The one on the right below), which seemed pretty good for £88, then I realised that was just for the bottoms and the top was another £88. Or £176 in total and again, in this economy, this feels…a lot? Just out of interest I looked up Hunza G on Vinted and there ARE some on there, but I’m not sure about buying secondhand swimwear. I’m thinking vaguely about the thrush thing again.

Reformation on the left; Hunza G on the right

Talking of Reformation, the below also made me laugh. For when you’re on the beach but you’ve also got a board meeting in half an hour.

£186 from Reformation

Anyway, the various ordered items arrived and the Next costumes are pretty good if you consider they’re only £32. Relatively thick material and they fit pretty well (bottom area not sawn in half!). So I’m keeping the frondy one, but sending the Sezane one back because weirdly, despite being three times the price, that DID feel quite flimsy and as if it was made from cheap material.

Sigh. So this is this week’s instalment: a lengthy lamentation about the ordeal that is buying swimwear. My friend Tash gets all hers from the Outnet on the basis you get quite fancy swimwear made from decent stuff on there, so long as you don’t mind having last season’s stuff. I don’t think most sensible people would mind that but I do understand that if you’re off to Ibiza it might be very shaming to be in last year’s Cavalli.

Best of luck with your own swimwear journey, and do remember the Canesten.

Pictures of the Week

Lovely day for it; map reading with a glass of rosé at The Ram in Firle; at The Alfriston, tired after a long day; the final push.

We walked the South Downs Way! Sort of. The whole thing is 100 miles from Winchester to Eastbourne, but my pal Hols and I did a very hilly, 22-mile chunk of it over the weekend, from Lewes to Beachy Head.

We were supposed to start on Saturday and do another 10 miles or so, but the weather forecast was dodgy so we decided two days of walking instead of three days was probably enough?

It certainly was for Dennis, who was so knackered on the final stretch of the Seven Sisters, as we staggered towards the pub for a celebratory lunch, that I had to keep picking him up and carrying him as per above. I investigated one of those doggy rucksacks some people have in advance (I’m looking at you,

Felicity

Cloake), but none of them looked big enough to carry my clothes, washbag etc for the trip PLUS Dennis. If anyone has recommendations for rucksacks that do both, I’m all ears.

It was GORGEOUS, anyway. Lovely stretch, this last bit of the South Downs Way. You get it all - woods, farmland, chalky paths, skylarks swooping and singing overhead, cottages festooned with roses, the rolling hills and fields of Sussex on one side of the Downs, and the sea visible on the other, cliffs, good pubs (crucial), and excellent cafés (also VITAL for cake stops).

I can’t recommend it enough if you’re after a two or three day meander. Or longer, obviously, if you want to do more of the route. But this was the perfect length for a weekend. Also, there’s a good new hotel called The Alfriston (we paid for it! Not an ad!) in - surprise surprise - the village of Alfriston, which is smack bang on the route if you need a stopping-off point for the night. Pretty wallpapered bedrooms, big bathrooms, dog friendly, spa and pool for weary legs, decent restaurant, lovely staff. Hols and I had to borrow some spa flip-flops to go down to dinner that night because we only had our walking boots otherwise (and we were quite sick of our boots by that point), but they didn’t even blink at that.

Quite a silly picture of our footwear taken before going down for dinner. Dennis uncertain what’s happening. We hadn’t even had a drink by that stage.

Recommendations of the Week

1. Right, this is a bit niche because it’s specifically for people who live in West Sussex/Surrey OR Hampshire. But I’ve recently discovered this rye bread - Danish rye bread - made by the brilliant Troels Bendix, a Sussex baker who has a business called Sødt and supplies various farm shops and restaurants, as well as The Pig and Goodwood. I’m a bit biased because, some years ago, Troels and Mum shared a market stall in Sussex - he sold his bread, and Mum sold her marmalade. So I’ve known about his bread for a while, but I hadn’t tried this Danish rye (Troels’s grandmother’s recipe) until a couple of weeks ago and I’m now *obsessed*. It’s that rare thing of being a food which is both good for you AND genuinely delicious. Admittedly a bit less good for you when covered with butter as per my lunch yesterday above (asparagus still going strong!), but still so much more delicious than any of the horribly thin slices of rye bread you find in plastic packets in the supermarket. If you happen to live near one of the various places in the counties above that stock Troels’s bread (look the farm shops etc up HERE), I v much recommend it. Lasts for ages and I now have three loaves of the stuff in my freezer. He also makes a ryeola - granola made from rye - which you can order online.

2. The Four Seasons, Netflix - This came out a few weeks ago (Tina Fey, Steve Carell 💘), and I’ve only just learned it’s a remake of a 1981 film called the same. The premise: we follow three middle-aged American couples, and their various dramas, over the course of a year. I haven’t made it sound deeply compelling, have I, but it’s funny and entertaining and extremely easy to watch. Also HALF HOUR EPISODES which, as I’ve mentioned before and imho, are the best kind of episode. As a friend recently said after she watched it, I’m not sure we’ll all be discussing the show in a year’s time (although it has just been given a second series), but if you want something straightforward to watch and/or binge on the sofa tonight, this could be it. Trailer below…

PS. And Just Like That… is back for a third series this Friday. On Sky. You know what I mean, the Sex And The City spin-off. Is it the worst series ever made? Is it even worse than Naked Attraction? I think it honestly might be and yet I can’t stop watching it. I was oddly gripped throughout the first and second series, unable to stop rolling around on the sofa and cackling about how bad it was (when SATC was so very very very iconic!), and yet I was also unable to turn it off. What’s going on there? Is it because we love the characters so much we don’t care that the storylines in the spin-off are wildly improbable? Is it because we like watching rich New Yorkers doing rich New Yorky things? Is it still her outfits? Beats me, but I presume I’ll be the same with the new series, too. Hmmm. What a mystery.

Look here’s the trailer for the new series which genuinely gave me goose bumps???

Nonsense of the Week

Bit of a continuation from the above on walking, but LOOK at this ridiculous if slightly amateur footage I took on Monday. I still can’t get over it. There’s a safety cordon along various bits of the Seven Sisters to protect people from falling 500ft to the rocks below, clearly visible in this clip, and yet dozens of people had merrily climbed over it to take selfies or - in the case above - to sit on a particularly perilous spot for a picnic lunch. From where we stood, that chalky lip looked like it had a crack underneath it, and could break off any any moment. No matter to the 20-something lads sitting there. They clearly wanted to eat their sandwiches while entertaining the very real and thrilling possibility that they could die at any moment. ‘This is really dangerous, isn’t it?’ giggled another woman to her friends as we passed them while they paused to take a photo very close to the edge.

I was so gobsmacked by the number of people being this moronic that I looked into it when I got home. Turns out, just over a month ago, the National Trust banned coaches from visiting Birling Gap, the place you can park nearby, to try and control visitor numbers here. They also warned that sections of these cliffs ‘could collapse any any time.’ And yet just LOOK at these photos of people tiptoeing near the edge from a piece in the Mail last month - and allowing their children to do the same! Someone replied to the video above, which I also stuck on Instagram, saying that her uncle worked for Sussex police for 40 years, ‘and I can’t tell you the number of people he’s had to support after a family member has fallen from that cliff.’ (Accidental falls, she clarified, not deliberate ones. Because Beachy Head is nearby but that’s obviously, sadly, a different matter.)

Another warning last month

I know, I know, I was also a visitor to the area and am in this very newsletter recommending people do the same. What a hypocrite! But there is PLENTY of room to go to the Seven Sisters for the magnificent views and the walking and stay well back from the cliffs. You don’t have to step over the safety cordon for the perfect selfie! I don’t want to lower the tone at the end of this newsletter but some sort of awful accident (or another one, anyway) can’t be very far away when people are being this thick.

PS. I wrote a piece for this week’s The Spectator about bridesmaids, which you can find HERE, and discussed this important matter on their weekly podcast, which you can find HERE.