Date achieved:
Wednesday 3rd January 2018
Where?
Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
Why is this experience on the Challenge List?
When most people would think about sandcastles it’s usually one that is made from the shape of a bucket and its small. I’ve been to sand art shows where they exhibit enormous creations that take weeks of molding the sand and they really are incredible sculptures. So what I wanted to do was create a sandcastle but on an EPIC level!
Description:
Just after New Years, I joined my family for a holiday at the beach in Warrnambool, the day after I arrived my cousins arrived and we went to the beach to meet some friends. This meant that I had a lot of helpers, there were eight children under 16 years and the youngest was three years old.
We started by working out the shape of the sandcastle that we wanted for this, we decided to go with a tiered cake layout. We worked out how big the base was going to be and started digging out the moat and building the bridge, whilst the others were dumping sand on top to make the second layer.
We used water to smooth the walls of the castle, when the second layer was finished we made the third layer. Once each of the three layers was at the desired height and smoothed then we started to mix water with the sand to make the smaller castles go on top of the sand cake in the end, there were 41 small sandcastles.
The children that were helping decided that the castle needed a neighbouring village so there are eight huts. After this photo was taken we filled up the moat with water and watched as the castle was surrounded by water that was trying to take it down but it a solid build that when we left it was still standing.
The entire build took about three hours, I was building it for the entire time but the children were helping in between swimming in the water.
Would I do it again?
I would do this again, it was such a great social activity and just getting to create a random imaginative piece of sand art.
Highlight:
Just after we finished the sandcastle my younger cousin decided he wanted to be buried in the sand, so all the children and I set off to bury him. After digging the hole, he went in and we layered the sand back up and he was covered, we could only see was his head sticking out. Everyone thought this was quite funny cause it made it look like he had nobody and just his head was sitting there.
Cost:
Nothing it was all FREE!
Literally, all you need is sand buckets (they are super cheap if you don’t have any or you could even wash out old soup tins), some time, and a bit of imagination.
Further information:
When making the actual sandcastles that need to hold their shape use wet sand as then it solidifies, then you don’t have to worry about them falling over!