I have always lved within 10 mins of the beach..used to live down on the beach in summer as a kid LOL, these days, not so much, I don't think we even went once last summer
where I live now is a 10 min walk, down the to the end of or street, but its high cliffs and rocks, not really very sandy and in the shade for most of the day (from the cliffs) so quite cool even on very hot days...if we do go to the beach we drive out about 10-20 mins to silver sands or sellicks beach, park the car on the sand right at the water front and jump on in!