I HAVE just spent three days and three nights surviving in one of this country’s least comfortable communities. 

The enclave of sub-standard accommodation is on an exposed peninsula and is most of the time isolated from the rest of Britain. The only road to the remote community is permanently closed to traffic. My family and I got there by boat. 

Throughout our 72 hours there, the four of us lived without modern comforts. Our cramped quarters were a wooden hut with no electricity, no hot water and even no drinkable running water. We had to fetch water from a nearby standpipe. 

The spartan settlement, only an hour from Winchester, consists of hundreds of similar huts, five toilet blocks and one brick building containing four flats. For the inhabitants, life is a battle to shed ubiquitous sand, which sticks to their feet and gets in their beds. 

When we wanted the toilet, even at night in our pyjamas, we had to walk from our hut to a public convenience. 

The huts are tiny, perhaps three metres wide and not much longer, yet each hut is worth more than the average house in Britain. It is thought they currently change hands for over £400,000. 

The reason for the sky-high prices is the picturesque waterside location, on the Mudeford sand spit at Christchurch in Dorset. The huts are arranged in two lines. The one on the beach side of the spit faces the sea, with views to the Isle of Wight. The other line, on the harbour side, looks across a lagoon to Christchurch Priory. 

For sun worshippers and boat enthusiasts, a hut on Mudeford Beach is paradise. Some families have owned their hut for generations, and there are strong neighbourly ties going back decades.  

A bar and pizza café operates till early evening. A ferry to Mudeford Quay and a land train to Hengistbury Head car park operate till late afternoon in summer. 

Despite the high property prices, living in a beach hut at Mudeford year-round is forbidden. Legally they are just holiday homes. Staying overnight is only allowed from March till October. 

There are other disadvantages. There are no trees and it can get roasting hot on the beach. If you don’t like swimming or walking and you tire of watching people and boats there is not much else to do. 

The ferry disgorges busloads of people and the spit can get crowded and noisy, with clouds of barbecue smoke. 

When we were there fearsome sun turned to cloud after lunch. Thick fog formed in late afternoon and the serene 360-degree views disappeared. So did the people. Visitors all headed for the ferry and hut owners withdrew to their huts. Even the café and bar emptied. 

The fog grew yet bleaker when rain arrived. Then the wet sand trudge to the toilet block really made you wonder if a hut could be worth a big part of £1million. 

At bedtime, with four constricted in a beach hut’s floor space, gymnastically reconfiguring furniture into two double beds is struggle enough to make even the keenest water sports enthusiast question the sense of investing nearly half a million in an overgrown dolls house. 

It felt good when we got home. After a beach hut even our little house seemed enormous. Several rooms, no sand, private bathroom, no need to go outside to the toilet! 

Unlike landlubber me, the rest of the family had found our time at Mudeford Beach luxurious, thanks to swimming, paddleboarding and canoeing. 

I almost agree, because on our last day the fog was gone, the sun shone and my wife and I paddle-boarded from the beach hut a mile up river to Christchurch and back. It was exhilarating. If I had a spare 400K maybe a microscopic beach hut wouldn’t be a bad idea after all. Like everything, Mudeford Beach is a matter of taste.