I had a brief period when Belle was in her mid teens when I thought my parenting responsibilities might soon be coming to an end. Bee was grown up, Belle was old enough to be responsible for taking care of herself, my work was surely done?
And then baby Joey came along, and I had all the responsibilities of being a grandparent to a small child, like remembering to put sunscreen on them and make sure they drink.
And then if that weren’t enough, we got a puppy. Honestly, I must be a sucker for it. Perhaps when you’ve been a parent since you were 17 you don’t know any other way and just have to fill the void?? Who knows. This post isn’t about diving into the depths of my subconscious, all this talk of sunscreen and responsibility is really just my oh so casual way of leading into a post about Sun and the Beach sunshades.
(I know, I’m a smooth operator.)
To be honest even when my own children were small I never owned things like sunshades. I think Mako the puppy has brought out this side in me that’s made me realise what a good job it was that I had my kids when I was younger and more care free. I don’t know if there’s a similar term to helicopter parenting that applies to puppies, but I think I might have it.
‘Is she okay? Is she allowed to eat grass? She barked once, what does she want? Is she sad?’
Good grief woman, give it a rest.
Still, at least now I don’t have to worry about Mako not having any shade in the garden or if we go to the beach. Not just any old shade either – Sun and the Beach sunshades are UPF50+ and block 98% of the sun’s harmful rays. No tan for you Mako.
She also very much enjoyed helping us to set it up.
The Sun and the Beach sunshade comes all packed nicely into a very useful bag and includes the canopy with built in sand bags, poles, pegs and a tiny trowel for sand! If you’re using it at the beach you fill the sandbags in each corner to weight it down. if you’re in the garden, just peg the corners instead. The pegs screw into the ground rather than having to be hammered in or anything, so they are super easy.
We had to make a few tweaks to the ropes to adjust the size to fit in our small garden, which shows you just how big the shade is normally. If you had this on the beach you’d easily fit a whole family or gaggle of children underneath it. It was very easy to put up – just pin out the shade and then lift the front section with the foldable poles.
Sun and the Beach have designed their sunshade to be as flexible as possible, so you could also use it as more of an awning, tying each corner to something above you and making a shady square underneath.
We found the shade very easy to put up and, just an importantly, easy to put down and pack away. If you’re worried it’s like taking down a tent and trying to fit everything back into a bag that feels like it has halved in size then don’t worry, it’s not like that at all! Everything packs away easily.
The Sun and the Beach sunshade would be a lovely thing to take on holiday or have in the boot of the car for day trips. We can all definitely recommend!
We were sent this as a gift for the purposes of this review. All views are my own.