Sunset

PRESENTER Laura Hamilton has stunned fans with sun-soaked bikini pics on the beach.

The TV star, 44, captioned the enviable pictures: “Golden hour understood the assignment.”

Sat on a swing, wearing a khaki green two-piece bikini, the travel guru wore her hair in a messy bun with oversized black sunglasses.

Barefoot, the blonde beauty looked relaxed and at home on the sand as she flashed her toned torso and abs.

Posing in front of the sunset, the star flashed a smile as she soaked up the remaining rays on the beach.

Fans commented: “What an amazing photo. Love the light, the composition. You look phenomenal.”

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A second added: “Stunning as always Laura.”

A third applauded: “Beautiful. Best hour of the day.”

The former Dancing on Ice 2011 star has previously been trolled for her swimwear choices – and was told ‘not to wear a bikini’ because of her age.

She defied haters and hit back that ‘life’s way too short to worry about what other people think’.

Laura split from husband Alex Goward, 45, back in 2022 after 13 years together.

He has since found love with PR Becky Knowles – who bears a striking resemblance to his ex-wife and is also a regular on the celeb circuit.

Insiders told The Sun that Laura is said to be ‘worried’ about coming face-to-face with her ex’s new girlfriend.

Our source said: “Laura wants her ex to be happy, but she can’t help feeling a bit irked by Becky and all this.

“The last thing she wants to see is him draped all over his beautiful new girlfriend in the press. That’s her world!”

In 2023, Laura opened up about her “tough” divorce from Alex, saying she had to stay strong for their children.

Laura married insurance broker Alex in 2012 – three years after they started dating.

They share two children together, 12-year-old Rocco and a daughter Tahlia, 11.

The TV star has since revealed she has been dating.

Two years ago was linked to married businessman James Pettigrew who was said to be going through a divorce.

The star found fame after working behind the camera for four years on shows including Top Of The Pops and Big Brother.

Following years between jobs, she made her debut as a presenter on A Place In The Sun in 2012.

July 15 (UPI) — A search for three people missing in San Francisco Bay after their cabin cruiser sank a day earlier will end when the sun sets on Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Eleven boats and four aircraft have been searching hundreds of miles of water for those reported missing after a cabin cruiser capsized off the coast of Alcatraz on Tuesday afternoon.

Officials initially said 19 people were aboard the 49-foot, three-level Volare cabin cruiser and that 17 people had been rescued from the water, leaving two people unaccounted for. One person rescued was later pronounced dead. A dog on board also died. But officials have since said 20 people were on the craft and that three were missing.

Capt. Jarod Toczko, sector commander of Coast Guard Sector San Francisco, announced the deadline for the search during a 2 p.m. press conference, explaining that none of the missing had been found, despite a search of more than 950 square nautical miles and more than 1,700 miles of track line.

“We have completely saturated the search area,” he said.

“As I look at the extensive search effort we have put forth to this point, I look at the probability of success of locating a survivor within the search area given everything we’ve put forth and all the environmental conditions, my intention is to suspend active search operations at sunset this evening.”

He said the families have been notified and crews will continue to search until the sun sets.

Dean Crispen, chief of the San Francisco Fire Department, said that three survivors who were transported to the hospital have been released and were “doing okay.”

The person who died was identified Wednesday by the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as 79-year-old Clifford Joseph Boisa of Sutter County.

Authorities were notified at 3:37 p.m. PDT about a boat in distress in the San Francisco Bay. Witnesses had incorrectly identified steam emanating from the boat as smoke, leading initial reports to indicate a fire was on board. Civilians boaters were first to arrive on the scene and are being hailed for saving lives.

The cause of the capsizing is under investigation, but Toczko told reporters that survivors and those who responded to the scene said that the boat was hit by a wave that caused it to list heavily, lose its stability and roll over.

Some occupants were thrown into the water, Toczko said, adding that there is a “high possibility” that others had been trapped inside the vessel.

Crispen had said during a Tuesday press conference that all aboard the vessel were adults, mostly family members and close friends who were participating in “some kind of memorial service.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said that while he laments the tragedy, he is “incredibly proud of the all hands-on-deck effort.”

“From Marin to Oakland to San Francisco to the good Samaritans, it was truly all hands-on-deck effort to save 16 people,” he said. “And my heart goes out to the families of the victims.”

DON’T have enough time or money to head to the Costa Del Sol at the moment? How about Croydon instead?

In just over a month, the Centrale’s multi-storey rooftop will transform into a ‘lively urban seaside escape’ just in time for summer.

The event is returning for its third year in a row from August 7-31 and will be ‘bigger than ever’.

It’s open seven-days a week and is completely free to enter.

There’s lots to entertain the entire family from its giant sand pit, splash park with spaces for babies, life-size chess, fairground rides and chill-out areas with shaded seating.

When it’s time to eat, there are street food vans and sweet treat stops too for donuts and candy floss.

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This summer there is something new as it is launching a new experience called ‘The Beach Club’.

It’s an adult-only event with an ‘after-hours programme’ taking place every Thursday between 5-8PM for the entire month.

There will be DJs, live music and plenty of cocktails.

The Beach Club will have a different theme every evening too with events like garage DJ nights, drag-hosted lip sync battles and pre-carnival dance acts.

There will also be more relaxed sip & paint sessions to music bingo.

Dominique Stagg, Centrale & Whitgift’s Marketing, PR & Events Manager says: “We created Costa Del Croydon to give Croydon residents a free summer experience right in the heart of the town centre.

“Over the last two years it’s become a real summer focal point for the community, with families returning time and time again.

“This year we’re excited to introduce The Beach Club nights, creating a new social experience for adults alongside the daytime family offer.”

While the experience is completely free to enter – it’s advised to book in advance to save a space and avoid disappointment.

Pre-bookings will be available from July 31 – for more info and to book a free ticket, head here.

We took Atlantic all the way to the Pacific, traveling from the San Gabriel Valley to Long Beach on foot. On the last morning of May, a group of us set out at 7:45 a.m. from a barren In-N-Out parking lot in Alhambra, where Atlantic Boulevard begins. We kept walking until we reached the water, 12 hours and more than 55,000 steps later.

In all, our group passed eight freeways, two highways, and one river, twice. We walked through a dozen cities: Alhambra, Monterey Park, Commerce, Vernon, Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, South Gate, Lynwood, Compton, Long Beach and, of course, Los Angeles.

We spent only about 1.5 miles, a half-hour, in the city of Los Angeles itself, all in East L.A. We spent more time in Lynwood than Los Angeles. We spent far more time — more than a third of our day — in Long Beach.

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To walk Atlantic was to connect the dots about how our region functions economically, from the port to the factories to the suburbs. It was also to realize just how expansive and multifaceted Long Beach is.

This is the sixth such walk of one lengthy street that, ending at the ocean, we’ve completed across Los Angeles. Our pursuit began in 2022 with Wilshire’s 16 miles, continued in 2023 with Sunset’s 25, maxed out in 2024 with Western’s 28-plus miles, and stepped back in 2025 with Pico’s 15.5 miles. Earlier this year, roughly 30 of us strolled all of Santa Monica’s 14.5 miles.

This time, we started with a group of 16, ranging in age from 20-something to sexagenarian, and finished with 12. Some walkers left and joined us along the way. Ten, including one Long Beach local, completed the street.

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1. Pedro Moura, center, gives a pep talk before leading a group on a 25-mile walk the length of Atlantic Boulevard. (Scott Strazzante/For The Times) 2. In so-L.A. fashion, a Tesla Cybertruck rolls past a pile of possessions flooding the sidewalk in front of an apartment building. 3. Josiah Fields, 15, earns money by cleaning car windshields at the intersection of Atlantic and Alondra Boulevards. 4. During the final mile of the their 25 mile walk, Chloe Stepney and Trevor O’Brien lead the way past Louis Burgers III on Atlantic Avenue. (Scott Strazzante/For The Times)

We’ve been playfully calling our annual jaunts the Big Walk. This one, we called the Bigger Walk. I suppose that makes Western the Biggest. We’ve come to believe the ideal distance for an all-day effort is about 20 miles. That seems long enough for it to feel like a real feat and short enough to include more interested folks and ample break time.

After a tranquil time on Santa Monica, I wrote that we expected Atlantic to be the opposite experience — “unwieldy, at times unwelcoming, and excessively industrial.” That was an overstatement at best and factually wrong at worst.

We did visit Vernon, the city that proudly promotes itself as “exclusively industrial.” But by one measure, Atlantic was literally the most welcoming street we’ve done yet. Many more people greeted us. The actual street was at least as pedestrian-friendly as Western or Sunset. At no point did we have to walk on the road or in a minuscule median.

We did, though, have to cross five crosswalks just to continue on Atlantic at one point, at an absurd intersection with Ferguson Drive, Goodrich Boulevard, Telegraph Road and Triggs Street. Railroad tracks and the famed old East L.A. Union Pacific Station stood to our left, and the 5 freeway to our right. Clearly, pedestrian convenience had not been front of mind during the area’s planning.

Oil might be the simplest way to illustrate how Atlantic differs from more famous L.A. streets. On Pico Boulevard, there are oil derricks hidden behind elaborate, towering facades. Along Atlantic, the derricks are just everywhere in plain sight for a while. We did walk atop both the Long Beach Oil Field, a mega giant field, and the Wilmington Oil Field, the third-largest oil field in the contiguous United States.

That’s Atlantic, lacking in pretense, not hiding anything, but exceeding our expectations. We saw more plants native to our region, including Cleveland sage and Sacred datura, than along Santa Monica. And we kept encountering vibrant pockets where we did not know they would be. Monterey Park was the first to impress us, with gorgeous Cascades Park tucked into a lush little valley.

A rose peeks through a fence at St. Rose of Lima Church on Atlantic Boulevard.

Lykayla Melendez poses in her quinceañera dress at Cascades Park along Atlantic Boulevard.

In East L.A., chilaquiles, tamales, tejuino and ribs were all available street-side, and one of our members noticed the newer location of the famed La Azteca Tortilleria in a strip mall near the Metro station. Azteca has been the No. 1 seed in Times columnist Gustavo Arellano’s tortilla tasting tournaments with KCRW; we picked up a couple dozen to go.

Farther south, Bell is best known locally as the home of brazenly corrupt city officials earlier this century. When we passed through, the shade provided by a pocket park in the city center became a crucial respite for our lunch break. Across the street, a community market was just starting up for the afternoon. We caught a couple songs from a talented mariachi band.

Once we crossed the 105 overpass, we quickly encountered four sizable parks, each no more than two miles from the last. We saw one pump track, two tennis courts and skate parks, several sports fields, and an impressive number of food trucks, including Instagram-famous Kitchen’s Corner BBQ. At least another dozen food vendors seemed to be setting up for evening service as we marched by in the late afternoon.

By the third park we passed, we were in Long Beach, specifically North Long Beach. The fourth, Scherer Park, is a sprawling, 26-acre gem. Soon enough we were in Bixby Knolls, where, for more than a decade now, Long Beach officials have been investing in improving bicycle and pedestrian access. It shows. We had a delightful happy hour on Ambitious Ales’ front patio overlooking Atlantic.

August Fagerstrom and Pedro Moura fist bump a well-wisher on Atlantic Avenue.

Official lists of the longest L.A.-area streets are almost impossible to find. Often, such lists are kept by cities. The longer the street, the less likely that all of it is within one city’s limits.

We can say this: There are not many stretches of a single street with the same name longer than Atlantic in the L.A. Basin. Western Avenue, definitely. Imperial Highway, depending on your perspective on what constitutes a street. Sunset is about the same length. And that’s about it.

Unless you want to be particularly persnickety and disqualify Atlantic on the grounds that it technically has two names. For its northern 10 miles, Atlantic is a boulevard. For its southern 15, it’s an avenue. Where Maywood becomes Bell, it switches. But it’s Atlantic all the same, and that was good enough for us.

Surely you’ve been wondering about the origin of the name. Atlantic has been named for the distant ocean since the 19th century, when a Brit tried to christen a city after himself and named its three major streets Pacific, American and Atlantic avenues, from west to east. American is now Long Beach Boulevard, so it no longer makes much sense.

At the end of their 25-mile walk, Chris Kirkham celebrates with fellow walkers at Atlantic Avenue and Ocean Boulevard.

Speaking of names: Our Alhambra is named after a Washington Irving book inspired by his visit to the 13th-century Islamic fortress of the same name in what is now Spain. You can walk to the actual Atlantic from that Alhambra in about 150 miles.

This was easier than that, at least. If you’re eager to explore the backbone of Los Angeles, curious for a challenge, you could do worse than attacking Atlantic. I promise you’ll see something new. We saw a street juggler. We saw a live chicken and a dead turkey. We saw a discarded box of Pacifico beer that had been cooking in the sun so long it turned from yellow to white.

Pedro Moura points out Chloe Stepney’s sock tan line as they celebrate the end of their 25-mile walk down Atlantic with a dip in the Pacific Ocean at Alamitos Beach.

After we rinsed our weary feet in the Pacific, some of us waddled back up to Downtown Long Beach and scarfed down Sonoratown burritos and chivichangas before heading home. It was a Sunday well spent.

A NEW cafe right by the beach has opened and it looks like it could be in Spain.

Southsea Beach Cafe has turned the former Beach Club into its second cafe in time for the summer.

Inspired by beach bars across Europe, the fringed umbrellas and rattan chairs wouldn’t look out of place in an Ibiza bar.

Serving breakfast and lunch, you can get all the classic of a Full English or avocado on toast, as well as burgers and fish and chips.

They also serve alcohol including cocktails and grazing boards.

Live music evenings will also return this summer, including Jazz Cafe nights and 5 Nights of Sumer with “sunset dining, European sharing platters and cocktails by the sea” along with music.

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Tickets start from £10, and run from 7pm to 9pm.

Otherwise the cafe is only open in the day, from 9am to 5pm, (or 3pm in the week).

The cafe’s general manager Elisa Standley told local media: “I think this place has completely reformed the beachfront – it’s taken a modern twist of what we used to do, and it’s expanded what we do in a better way.

“It’s got probably the best view in Southsea.”

Outside of the cafe, Southsea is set to double the size of its beach and improve the size promenade.

Locals have also explained why they think Southsea is the best seaside town in the UK.

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A STUNNING 25-acre lavender field is opening to the public for summer.

From this weekend, visitors will be able to visit a sprawling purple paradise for the ultimate picturesque walk.

Mayfield Lavender Farm offers expansive floral fields, perfect for frolicking, and welcomes visitors during the warmer months every year.

With the lavender plants blooming once again, the Surrey farm is open for days out from Saturday, June 6.

Opening hours are from 9am to 6pm every day, with last entries at 5:15pm.

With 25-acres of sensationally scented land to explore, the area is located in Banstead, just 15 miles from central London.

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It also provides the perfect backdrop for some striking photography or a serene summer stroll.

With the farm’s gates set to remain open until August 23, flower fans can expect the plants to offer the best blooms in mid July.

There’s even a contrasting red phone box nestled amongst the violet buds that provides a rather aesthetically pleasing Instagram photo opportunity.

Entry to Mayfield is affordable with ticket prices for adults and children over 11 starting from £7.40. Tickets for little ones aged between four and 11 start at £2.50, while under fours get in for free.

General admission tickets allow entry to the fields with access to the on-site cafe and shop.

There’s also the option to pay a little more for the likes of a tractor ride around the fields, the opportunity to adopt a lavender plant and get access to the farm’s potting station.

Tickets can be purchased upon arrival, but it’s recommended to grab them online before you go during busier periods like weekends and school holidays.

There is free parking on site, too, although it is limited.

Visitors can also make their way to the lavender farm via train from London Bridge Station to Woodmansterne, with services taking as little as 40 minutes.

THE best beaches in Europe have been revealed and the number one spot is a beautiful escape with super cheap flights.

Dubbed one of Portugal’s ‘Sunset Beaches’, Monte Clérigo sits in the Algarve region, but is much quieter than other crowded resorts.

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The Algarve draws in millions of Brits every year wanting to explore its golden sand beaches and bask in its glorious sunshine.

It’s most popular resorts include Albufeira, Vilamoura and Alvor – but that’s not where you’ll find the best beach.

Tucked away on the western coast is Praia de Monte Clérigo which has just been declared the best beach in all of Europe by European Best Destinations.

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Beaches across Europe are assessed on aspects like natural beauty to water quality, family-friendliness, available activities, accommodation and overall atmosphere.

The 30 highest-rated beaches are then submitted to an international panel of travellers and tourism enthusiasts who vote to find the ‘Best Beaches in Europe 2026′.

Monte Clérigo Beach was described the beach as having ‘golden cliffs’ and ‘wild Atlantic landscapes’.

The ‘wildness’ of the coastal spot comes from the fact that it forms part of the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast Natural Park where there’s lots of greenery and plenty of hiking routes.

The beach also has fine sand, low-tide rock pools, is ideal for surfing, and its nearby town of Aljezur is filled with colourful cottages some of which sit up on the cliffside.

Monte Clérigo is considered one of Portugal’s best ‘Sunset Beaches’ too.

Thanks to its position on the western coast, beachgoers have a clear view of the sun as it sets looking like it sinks into the ocean.

One visitor wrote on Tripadvisor: “Stunning beach on rugged coastline. Visited several times. Away from hectic tourist resorts. This beach is beautiful. It’s well worth waiting for some sunset photos!”

Another added: “I discovered another beautiful beach on the southwest coast of Portugal. Pristine and unspoiled is how I’d describe the place.”

Right on the sands is Restaurant O Sargo which has live music every Friday night and is popular with locals and visitors who enjoy fresh seafood and watch the sunset in the evening.

Faro International Airport is an hour and a half drive away from the beach, so from the UK you could be sunbathing on the beach in under five hours.

One-way flights are as little as £13.99 in June flying from London Luton with Wizz Air.

Other beaches that secured a spot on the list were Voutoumi Beach in Antipaxos which came in second place.

Elafonisi Beach which is a rare pink beach in Crete came in fourth place.

One beach in Norway even made it onto the list, Kvalvika Beach has bright blue waters and is backed by enormous mountains – certainly making it one of the most beautiful.

The ‘Best Beaches in Europe’ for 2026…

These are the ‘best beaches in Europe’ as rated by European Best Destinations…

1. Monte Clerigo – the Algarve, Portugal
2. Voutoumi Beach – Antipaxos, Greece
3. Fteri Beach – Kefalonia, Greece
4. Elafonisi Beach – Crete
5. Bogliasco Beach – Italy
6. Cala Mesquida – Majorca, Spain
7. Kvalvika Beach – Moskenesoy, Norway
8. Rovinia Beach – Corfu, Greece
9. Kaputas Beach – Turkey
10. Paleokastritsa Beach – Corfu, Greece