When the rain comes and come it does, for about four hours each day your lovely plans for a picnic on the beach are washed away with the shoreline.

FORBES: Isolation Is The New Luxe! Find It By Speedboat In The Amazon

The latter makes for a good picnic-on-the-beach lunch.

BBC: Island hopping in Finland

Those of a less Romantic inclination were equally drawn to the beach, if not for a "surf bathe", then for a picnic and a promenade, fish and chips and a flirt.

BBC: Shore thing: Australia��s beach obsession

Trucks cluster in office districts and hipster nightlife neighbourhoods from Venice Beach to Silver Lake, and no street fair, gallery opening or company picnic is complete without at least one food truck (visit individual websites below, or www.mobimunch.com for detailed listings).

BBC: The LA food truck revival

"Look at me, I'm a size 2, " she says on a daytime cable TV commercial, skipping along a beach in a bikini, smooching her husband on a footbridge and cuddling her baby at a picnic.

FORBES: Before... and After