But this family upped the ante on sandcastle chic when they created this painstaking row of sand-beach huts which wowed editors at The Guardian and scooped first prize in their sandcastle competition.

Jeff Pitcher, 41, his partner Cath Leavers, 39, and two sons Sonny, 12, and Beau, 9, of Hammond Road, Broadfield were visiting Cath's family in St Ives, Cornwall when they came across the advert in the paper asking for entries, and it didn't take the family long to get creative.

Jeff said: "We were reading the paper on the beach and we thought 'that'd give us something to do'.

"We made a castle and kept improving it every day, we just kept modifying it. We started off with normal sandcastles but we made them bigger – one attempt got washed away in the rain.

"We realised it was quite good by the attention we kept getting."

And Cath added: "It became quite a talking point on the beach, people kept coming over to have a look and then they'd have their photo taken with it."

The idea for the beach huts came from Sonny and Beau when they spotted a postcard on their way to the beach and were reminded of their Nan's one in Brighton.

And the end result was a full on family effort with pebble finding expeditions by the boys and Cath adding her artistic talents, painting the tiny house numbers on with tipex.

Beau said: "We found most of the things, number three we found with the number actually already painted on it so we used that.

"It was really hard because when we were putting the lines on, it could have all fallen down – we did another one before which collapsed."

But the boys didn't reckon they were in with a chance of winning before they heard the news – although they were thrilled when they did.

Sonny said: "I was kind of relieved, my brother was saying that we weren't going to win."

And Beau added: "I wasn't thinking that we were going to win this. I thought there were going to be people building sand horses and stuff."

But despite the boys' fears, their older sister Josie sent off the entry and Cath got the phone call last Thursday – she was so pleased she nearly fell off her bike.

She said: "I was cycling into town with the kids when I got the phone call and we were so please we were cycling along in a line shouting 'woohoo!' – people must have thought we were mad."

But the family don't just get the honour of claiming the top spot, winging its way to them is £750 worth of state-of-the-art camping gear, including a massive tent, from competitions sponsors Snow & Rock.

Jeff said: "We might go down to West Wittering or maybe we could take it to a festival next year, we've never done that."

But Beau has more immediate plans for the gear. He added: "Tilgate Park might be a nice place to take it and do some fishing."