A trip to the beach can only be a complete success if Dad doesn’t get sand in the Camry.

Dads have different ways of achieving this.

At worst, Dad will expect you to walk down to the water’s edge, plonk your thongs down on the wet sand, wash your feet in the whitewater, jump back into your thongs, and walk back to the car without flicking a single grain of dry sand onto the backs of your calves. Impossible.

At best, Dad has done his research, and knows that any beachside public toilet worth its salt will have facilities to wash said salt (and sand) off the body.

The public toilet at Peterborough is a superb example of such a toilet.

For a quick rinse, there’s outdoor showers at the back of the block.

And for a deeper clean, there’s showers and changing rooms inside—handy for road trippers and travelling public toilet photographers.

Peterborough was founded in 1855, when a few people came to have a stickybeak at a nearby shipwreck and couldn’t be arsed going home. Peterborough soon became a popular unscheduled stop for ships of all shapes and sizes, such as the Falls of Halladale, pictured below in 1908.

These days it is possible to stop in Peterborough in a planned and leisurely manner, without being torn to pieces on jagged limestone reefs. There is even a bottle shop.