Megan’s community
A look at the place Megan calls home
Beach huts at Hengistbury Head. Image by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
Most visitors to Bournemouth never make it as far as Sandford. They stay closer to the piers, the gardens, the wide sweep of sand that draws the crowds in July and August. But head east along the coast road, past the last of the beach cafés, and the town quietly changes character. The pace slows. The gulls sound less like a soundtrack and more like neighbours.
Bournemouth Pier. Image by Jordy Munoz on Unsplash
Sandford sits on a rise above that stretch of coast – close enough to taste the salty ozone from the sea, far enough to feel like somewhere people actually live rather than simply visit. It has the particular charm of a place that has never tried especially hard to be charming. A busy street of independent shops. A church, St Peter's, with a noticeboard that still gets read. A primary school run that clogs the surrounding area for twenty minutes each morning and afternoon. Locals will tell you that's the thing about Sandford: it doesn't ask you to explain yourself. It simply gets on with things.
Hengistbury Head, to the east of Bournemouth. Image by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
Overland Road
Easing up a gentle slope, Overland Road commands the kind of view that estate agents describe as “elevated” and everyone else simply calls lovely – past the shops, the parked cars, and down to the coast road, beyond which the sea front falls away to the beach below. It's on this road that you'll find the Café Toucan, its stained-glass birds presiding over the street from above the arched windows, and Church Lane running quietly alongside it toward the old people's home at its end.
It's a busy stretch of road, with cars and buses weaving past the delivery lorries that habitually offload at the side of the street. The occasional driver hurrying back to his van, clutching a paper bag and a takeaway coffee, a sheepish look about him as locals tut – he feigning ignorance about the double yellow lines on which he parked.
As for the businesses, new arrivals like the Toucan sit comfortably alongside those that have been trading for decades, and nobody seems especially bothered by the mix. Sandford has always absorbed change without making a fuss about it.
An early illustration of The Café Toucan prior to its completion. Overland Road slopes gently down towards the coast. The entrance to Church Lane can just be seen on the right. Drawing by Kashvi Everson (Kas), as part of her design brief
Further inland
Walk north past the café, away from the coast, and you come to the primary school on your right. Overland Road then gives way to quieter residential streets – the kind with hedges instead of walls, and cars that stay parked in the same spot for days at a time. It's on one of these that Megan Hughes lives with her two children, in a house she and her late husband bought together, back when Sandford was simply where they'd chosen to raise a family, long before it became the place where she now runs a business. It's a house on a small development, rather grandly described as an ‘executive home’ when it was built with a dozen others back in the nineties. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a double garage. Adam’s property management business had enjoyed early success and Megan’s dream home was the result. She needs no reminding that in some ways at least, she has been very lucky. It's easy to see why she’s determined to hang on to what she has. Because for all that's changed in Megan's life over the past year, this corner of it hasn't – the same memories of their family life, the same view of the sea from the end of the road if you know exactly where to stand.
Megan’s home in Sandford. Drawing by Kashvi Everson
The walk down
And on a day off, it's a pleasant walk from home and into the village, past the shops and down to where the coast road overlooks the sea. It's a walk plenty of Sandford's residents make without much thought, the way you might make any walk you've done a hundred times before. For Megan, these days, it's become something closer to a ritual than a pleasure – the kind of walk that clears the head rather than simply exercising a tired body.
The East Cliff zig-zag path, linking East Overcliff Drive with Undercliff Drive
Image by James Mcpherson on Unsplash