Lily Mae

Lily Mae writes the verdicts. The directory measures beaches; she argues about them.

A directory of measurements is accurate and slightly cold. Sand type, water entry, swimmability, crowd level — all true, all useful, and none of it tells you whether a beach is worth the early start. That judgement is what her column is for, and it is deliberately kept apart from the data: set in italics, marked in magenta, confined to its own block. Remove it and every page still reads completely.

What she looks for

Timing, mostly. Most beaches are two or three different places depending on the hour and the month, and the gap between the good version and the ordinary one is usually a decision someone could have made differently — leaving an hour earlier, picking the other access, going in April instead of July.

After that: access. Where you actually park, which right-of-way is worth using, what the walk down is like carrying things. It is the part guidebooks skip and the part that decides whether a morning works.

And honest negatives. A beach that is wrong for you is more useful to know about than a tenth one that is fine, which is why the listings carry a "not the right beach if" as seriously as the rest.

What her ratings are

An editorial view, the way a critic rates — not a survey score and not an average of anything. She is one opinion, held consistently across the directory so that a four somewhere means roughly what a four means elsewhere. Where you disagree, the measured data underneath is unchanged and you can read past her entirely.