Pack for the Wind, Not the Postcard

A picnic on a Cornish headland or a Norfolk dune is a different business from one on a park lawn. There is usually wind, often sand, rarely a bench, and never a tap to rinse your hands under. Seagulls are watching, and anything light enough to blow away will. The trick is to plan a picnic you can eat sitting on a rock or standing up, with one hand free to hold a hat on.

That single constraint shapes everything else. Food needs to hold together under its own weight, packaging needs to stay put and come home with you, and drinks need lids. Get those three things right and a coastal picnic is one of the great pleasures of a British summer — even when the sun is doing its usual shy act.

Build a Salad That Gets Better, Not Soggier

Leafy salads are a lost cause in a rucksack. Instead, lean on sturdy salads built from grains, pulses, roots and roasted vegetables — the sort that absorb dressing happily and taste better after an hour in a cool bag. Cook a batch the night before and pack it in a lidded tub with a square of greaseproof paper pressed onto the surface.

• Grain salads: pearl barley, bulgur wheat or orzo with roasted peppers, red onion and a lemony dressing. Add crumbled feta just before you leave so it doesn't break down.
• Pulse salads: chickpeas or butter beans with chopped celery, capers, parsley and plenty of olive oil. Firm and forgiving.
• Potato salads: waxy new potatoes in a mustard vinaigrette rather than mayonnaise — mayonnaise is a food-safety gamble on a warm afternoon.
• Roasted vegetable salads: courgette, aubergine and red onion roasted until slightly firm, then dressed while warm so they drink up the oil.

Keep dressing separate if you are travelling more than an hour or two, and stir it through when you stop. If you do want a dressed salad ready to go, put the dressing in the bottom of the tub and lay the salad on top. It will travel without turning to mush.

Pasties, Pies and Other Hand-Held Heroes

The Cornish pasty earned its reputation for a reason: crimped edges make a handle, the filling is thick enough not to leak, and it survives a long walk in a paper bag. A warm pasty from a proper baker's, wrapped in greaseproof paper and then a tea towel, will still be pleasantly warm two hours later if it starts hot and sits in the middle of your rucksack.

Other reliable options include:

• Sausage rolls, especially the coarse-cut kind, which travel far better than anything delicate.
• A thick frittata or Spanish tortilla, cut into wedges, which is happy warm or cold.
• Pork pie, scotch eggs and good sharp Cheddar with oatcakes.
• Flapjack, which is essentially indestructible, and a bag of cherries or grapes.

Avoid anything with a loose sauce, a soft meringue or a cream filling. Heat plus jostling equals disappointment.

Solving the Soggy Sandwich Problem

If you want sandwiches, build them with a butter barrier. Butter both slices right to the edges before anything else goes near the bread — it waterproofs the crumb. Then think about moisture: grated cheese rather than sliced, cucumber deseeded or left out entirely, tomato sliced and blotted on kitchen paper. Better still, take the components separately and assemble on the beach with a small knife.

The best-travelling sandwiches are dense, pressed and wrapped tightly in greaseproof paper, then cut in half only when you are ready to eat. A wrapped whole sandwich holds its shape; a cut one starts to dry out at the exposed edge. And skip cling film in favour of paper and reusable wax wraps — they stay put in wind and go home with you.

Flask Drinks for a Cold Shore

Even in July, a British clifftop can turn chilly the moment the sun goes behind a cloud. A flask earns its weight every time. Fill a good vacuum flask with hot tea, coffee or — brilliantly underrated — hot soup, and preheat it first by swirling boiling water inside for a minute and tipping it out. That one step can add an hour or more of heat.

• Hot: strong tea with milk added at home, black coffee, spiced apple juice, or a thin lentil or tomato soup in a wide-mouthed flask.
• Cold: fill a bottle three-quarters full and freeze it overnight, then top up with water before you leave. It stays cold all day and doubles as a chill pack for the food.
• Extras: a small bottle of cordial to dilute with water from a flask rather than buying drinks on the way.

Avoid fizzy drinks in a rucksack. They will find a way.

Pack It In, Pack It Out

Coastal bins are often overflowing or simply absent, so assume everything you bring comes home with you. Take a sturdy bag for rubbish and a second for anything recyclable. Reusable tubs, wax wraps, a flask, proper cutlery from the kitchen drawer and cloth napkins all weigh very little and save a bag of waste.

Watch the gulls in particular. They are bold, they are fast, and they will take a pasty from your hand mid-sentence. Keep food in a zipped bag or a lidded box, eat with your back to the wind so smells drift away from the cliffs, and never leave a bag unattended on the sand. Eat your fill, tuck the wrappers away, and leave the beach exactly as you found it — which is the whole point of going.