I do love a trip to the seaside. The opportunity to get away to the coast and enjoy sun, sea breeze and sand. There's something mighty refreshing about a vista that's half water, and that special feeling of being on the edge of an untameable natural powerhouse. Ah, those endless promenades of salt-splattered buildings, and rows of brightly painted beach huts, and piers and pebbles and donkey rides and candy floss and... Sorry, I may be getting a little carried away there. Because the seaside's not what it was.
When I was very little, one week of every summer would be spent at the seaside. The family would troop off to some guest house or self-service chalet somewhere, always within walking distance of the beach, and I'd spend my days happily patting sand into buckets or dripping ice cream onto a stripy towel. Maybe there'd be a stroll along the dune-tops, possibly a too-brief donkey ride, perhaps an afternoon at the crazy golf failing to hit balls through a drainpipe beneath a spinning windmill. Although it was often a bit damp and chilly, and the bacon and beans weren't quite such a treat by the sixth morning, and when you've seen one floral clock you've seen them all. Ah yes, golden days.
Last month I was walking along the promenade in Herne Bay chatting to an Australian, trying to explain to him that this now quiet resort had once been a bustling summertime hotspot. No really, this place used to be swarming with families, and the B&Bs were full, and that bandstand really had a band in it, and this ice cream van would've had a really long queue waiting for 99s. To be honest, it was quite hard to sound convincing. The Great British Seaside Experience sounded rather tame through Australian eyes. Shouldn't we be out surfing, or swimming, or doing something active and exhilarating in the water? Ah no, we Brits have always preferred dossing about at the water's edge, lying behind a wind break, eating battered cod out of newspaper or going for a pointless stroll to the end of the pier and back. We like our seaside passive.
We used to go to the seaside for a week, and now we go for the day. Bad news for all the promenade hotels and backstreet guest houses, nobody wants to stay overnight in you any more. And even when we do head coastward, we're more likely to spend our time in the local shopping centre than on the seafront. Restaurants have to grab what trade they can at lunchtime because by evening everyone's already buggered off home. Piles of stripy deckchairs remain neatly stacked, amusement arcades stand empty and the Punch and Judy show has long folded. Even the limpets and starfish in countless coastal rockpools now go unprodded. The heyday of the seaside holiday is long gone.
If you miss how it used to be, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has just opened a free exhibition entitled Beside the Seaside, and it runs until next Easter. "The exhibition" (and I quote) "brings together photographs, posters and seaside memorabilia to capture the essence of both working life and early tourism along the British coast." It's a fairly small exhibition, not much more than a few photographs stuck on the wall to be honest, but it does provide a nostalgic recollection of UK seaside magic. If you've got a favourite resort, there's probably a black and white snapshot of some old fishermen, or Victorians on the pier, or an impossibly crowded beach. The accompanying text reveals that much of the 19th century growth in seaside holidays was due to the spread of the rail network - once the railway arrived, so did the masses. More evocative is a series of short newsreel snippets depicting beach and promenade life, including some bouncy Blackpool belles whose energetic outdoor pursuits probably attracted many a hot-blooded male to the northwest coast.
The exhibition's not worth travelling miles out of your way to see - you'll be through it in quarter of an hour tops. But, this being the modern multimedia age, there are many ways to enjoy it online. The 45 photographs featured in the exhibition are all readily viewable on the NMM's Flickr account, as well as pinpointed on a handy map of the UK. Meanwhile Anne from I Like has helped to assemble a more modern set of Flickr seaside photos, almost 1000 in total at time of writing, and the resulting slideshow is a colourful cavalcade of beach huts, lidos and lighthouses. Enough to see any coast-deprived landlubber through the long winter months. Ah yes, I must go back to the sea again...
I do love a trip to the seaside. The opportunity to get away to the coast and enjoy sun, sea breeze and sand. There's something mighty refreshing about a vista that's half water, and that special feeling of being on the edge of an untameable natural powerhouse. Ah, those endless promenades of salt-splattered buildings, and rows of brightly painted beach huts, and piers and pebbles and donkey rides and candy floss and... Sorry, I may be getting a little carried away there. Because the seaside's not what it was.
Last month I was walking along the promenade in Herne Bay chatting to an Australian, trying to explain to him that this now quiet resort had once been a bustling summertime hotspot. No really, this place used to be swarming with families, and the B&Bs were full, and that bandstand really had a band in it, and this ice cream van would've had a really long queue waiting for 99s. To be honest, it was quite hard to sound convincing. The Great British Seaside Experience sounded rather tame through Australian eyes. Shouldn't we be out surfing, or swimming, or doing something active and exhilarating in the water? Ah no, we Brits have always preferred dossing about at the water's edge, lying behind a wind break, eating battered cod out of newspaper or going for a pointless stroll to the end of the pier and back. We like our seaside passive.
If you miss how it used to be, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has just opened a free exhibition entitled Beside the Seaside, and it runs until next Easter. "The exhibition" (and I quote) "brings together photographs, posters and seaside memorabilia to capture the essence of both working life and early tourism along the British coast." It's a fairly small exhibition, not much more than a few photographs stuck on the wall to be honest, but it does provide a nostalgic recollection of UK seaside magic. If you've got a favourite resort, there's probably a black and white snapshot of some old fishermen, or Victorians on the pier, or an impossibly crowded beach. The accompanying text reveals that much of the 19th century growth in seaside holidays was due to the spread of the rail network - once the railway arrived, so did the masses. More evocative is a series of short newsreel snippets depicting beach and promenade life, including some bouncy Blackpool belles whose energetic outdoor pursuits probably attracted many a hot-blooded male to the northwest coast.
