Every Spring Bank Holiday the Ace Cafe in London organises a mass bikeride to the seaside. It's meant to recall the Mods and Rockers invasions of the Sixties, and this is its twelfth year. Officially the ride starts on the North Circular at 10.30am, but at 10.30am the Margate seafront was already heaving with bikes and scooters, and still they kept coming. Thanet's a long way from almost everywhere, so every rider gets a good burn. I have never seen so many bikes and bikers together in oneplace.
Once arrived everyone stands around and admires their fellow riders' steeds, or nips into a conveniently located cafe or pub, or goes shopping. The promenade and pier are lined with stalls should you want to take a new helmet home, or buy a professionally-taken photo of yourself arriving, or buy some insurance from the event's chief sponsor. The demographic's generally old and beardy, although I did spot one group of ungrizzled teens raising the standard for a more diverse future. A friendly but overpowering invasion.
✉ Woolworths
Ten years after Woolies folded, its branding lives on in Margate's High Street. Occasionally someone's used the interior for art, but no chain wants the old store full time. Even Primark has ditched town for the inland retail park on the road to Broadstairs, and they're not alone. While the locals frequent the street's lacklustre leftovers, daytrippers cluster in the boutiques and pavement cafes of the Old Town... on this occasion wondering where the hell all the bikes have come from.
✉ Dreamland
Margate's marvellous Victorian pleasure park lives on, reborn and refreshed, following uncomfortable decades of decline. The latest renaissance faltered on a lack of thrills and a steep admission charge, but a move to free entry seems to have rescued things, and even the miseries checking bags for imported refreshments have now been sent packing. Now you pay by the ride, or stump up for a wristband, or simply revel in the opportunity to wander round and remember how things used to be. On a benign bank holiday Monday it was buzzing.
The centrepiece is the Scenic Railway, technically the UK's oldest rollercoaster and 100 years old next year, although in truth almost entirely re-timbered after an arson attack in 2008. It rattles round above the park to screams and the waving of hands, fare more of an adrenaline rush on board than its gradients appear from outside. Walk beneath its struts and you can see the wheels and pulleys that power the cable that keeps everything on track, the very definition of old-fashioned amusement.
I remember riding the chair-o-planes in 1992, and looking down over Margate from the top of the big wheel, and feeling proper queasy on the waltzer. Dreamland does vintage rides with aplomb, but also modern spinny things and that pole with the seats that go up and down very fast and the obligatory roller disco. Plenty to keep Dad and the kids occupied while Nan and Grandad wave from the sidelines and littlest daughter begs to go on the dodgems again. Even the t-shirted staff look like they're enjoying their dream day out.
✉ Seaside: Photographed
The Turner Contemporary's been going eight years but this is the first time the top floor's been entirely devoted to an exhibition of photographs. The overarching theme is 'seaside', and they had me at the publicity photo which features a 1950s beachtowel scene whose chief protagonist looks exactly like my mum. It's the glasses. People have always loved to pose at the seaside, hence the first gallery runs from sepia Victorian vignettes to skew blurry holiday snaps to multiple modern beach hut portraits. Expect wall after wall of random folk captured in the pursuit of joy, each unintentionally representing the era they lived in. I wanted to applaud the sheer nostalgic rush of it all.
It's not all about people. One gallery includes hundreds of lovingly catalogued postcards depicting rough seas, another cabinet displays a dozen Shell Guides of coastal counties opened at some lovely landmark or Betjeman description. Holiday camps, dowdy hotel rooms and retail deprivation all get a look in, as do works' outings and stripy deckchairs, indeed the tangential breadth of interpretation truly inspires. I spent far longer walking round this exhibition than any of the gallery's previous artier displays, and stopped to congratulate a curator on the way out. Opened yesterday. Continues until the Turner Prize takes over in September (but that won't be as good).
✉ Westgate-on-Sea
To skip the seafront crowds, and the bikers, you don't have to walk far. Head west along the Westbrook Promenade and the sandy beach continues but the incomers fade away. Here are beach huts owned by the retired residents of adjacent clifftop avenues, and enough sand to make Southend and Brighton wildly jealous. Lifeguards scan the waves between flapping flags, immaculate lawns act as a sinuous coastal buffer and cyclists please occasionally dismount. Westgate Bay boasts an almost unused sweep, but Birchington's less wow so don't take your towel that far.
