The love sandcastle competition at West Wittering beach was a great success, and 27 teams joined in the fun.
The sun shone as West Wittering beach filled to the brim on Saturday, August 18, and RIBA picked the hottest day of the year to host its sandcastle competition to promote architecture.
Judging the awards was district councillor Peter Clementson, local surf company owner Simon Bassett, and the managing director of Capita, one of the sponsors of the day.
The overall winner was the Crisp family from Pagham, and team member Darren Crisp said: “This is the first time we’ve entered the competition at West Wittering as a family and we’ve had a great day.
“We are really pleased to be chosen as the winners especially as some of the other sculptures are very impressive.”
Runners-up were Team Us from Gosport. Cllr Clementson picked the winners and said: “It has been a wonderful day on West Wittering beach, with blue skies and sunshine the beach is thronging with people having wonderful fun.
“I am grateful to RIBA for organising the competition. There were some extraordinarily inventive designs and all prizes were well-deserved.”
The people’s choice, chosen by passing beachgoers, was won by Eliot Latham, ten, and Orla Latham, eight, of Sidlesham, who made a sand wave, and runners-up were the CJ crew, from Eastleigh.
The tallest structure award went to local band Iccas Belle whose members are from East Wittering and Bracklesham. They said: “We are in shock really as we came down here to take part and didn’t think we’d be in the running.
“We are quite competitive so we put our all into it! It was great to take part.”
Runners-up for tallest structure were the Pollard family, from West Wittering with their sand tower. Simon Bassett, who judged this category, said: “It is great to see people enjoying the beach really interesting designs I had to choose the tallest so it was pretty obvious what were the good sand castles. A lot of people had put effort into their creations and it was great to see so many people on the beach today.”
The most technically daring prize went to team Sea J Sea T, from London architecture company Carey Jones, who built the perfect pyramid.
Rab Bailie decided which castle was most technically daring and said: “I am from the property design business Capita Symonds in Southampton and judging from an artistic point of view so it is no surprise the pyramids came top.”
Organiser Shelagh Ferriman of RIBA, said: “It was a fantastic day, and people have been asking if we are running the event again next year, so it has obviously been successful.
“We are overwhelmed by how well it went, and we had a brilliant time.”