Pebble Gifts at the Seaside

On a recent holiday in Cromer my brother and I left stones that we had decorated on benches near the sea front for other holidaymakers to find.

This is something I first did a few years ago after walking along the beach and finding unusual stones that looked like faces and animals.

Why don't you have a go next time you are at a seaside resort that has a pebbly beach? Arm yourself with some Sharpies to add character to the stones and then plant them where people will find them.

Return to the locations later to see if the stones have been picked up. 

On this latest occasion a large stone cat managed to make its way from a seat overlooking the Rocket Cafe to a bench further up the coastal path! I wonder... did it walk there itself?

Skegness

What images are conjured up by the name of ‘Skegness’?

A queue of traffic stretching towards Lincolnshire’s most popular seaside resort?… More fish and chip shops than you can count on 6 hands?… the numerous caravan parks?… or Butlin’s holiday camp?

The railways made Skegness, just as they did so many other British seaside resorts. The familiar picture of a fisherman bounding along with the slogan ‘Skegness is so bracing!’ was originally a railway poster by John Hassall (1908) and has become an enduring emblem of the town.

Billy Butlin was the next individual that should take credit for Skegness’s tourism industry. After making his fortune by opening a chain of seaside amusement parks in resorts such as Mablethorpe, Hayling Island and Bognor, Butlin opened his first holiday camp at Skegness in Easter 1936, with admissions rising from 500 per week to 1,000 per week by June of that year (Butlin, 1982: 107). This holiday camp still survives whereas other Butlin camps at Filey and Clacton have folded.

The other most popular way to holiday in Skegness is in a caravan. As Walton argues, Skegness saw a decrease in ‘serviced bedspaces’ between 1950 and 1998, but ‘gained more than 15,000 caravans over the same period’, and saw a boom due to second holidays, and self-catering at the turn of the 80s and 90s. (Walton, 2000: 69).

Like Blackpool, Skegness appears to be a resort that acknowledges the working-class tastes of its consumers. The visitors guide usually has the resort’s nickname ‘Skeggy’ unpretentiously emblazoned across its front cover. Comic T-shirts refer to the town as 'Skeg Vegas'.

In summer 2016 I returned to Skegness after an interval of many years. I found that very little had changed since childhood. The sands were still reassuringly crowded with families, there were still plenty of places to buy fish and chips, and the delicious egg custards that aunty enjoyed were still bigger in the Skeggy bakeries than anywhere else on earth.

A Hillbilly shooting gallery that I’d last played in the 1990s was still here, firing water back at those sure-shots who managed to hit a target. One thing which did stand out as being new were the stalls openly selling alcoholic slush! This is a beverage which will cool you off and send you tipsy after sunbathing on the sands all day. 

Slush, fish and chips, donuts and the midday sun will force you to retire to your caravan for a much needed late afternoon nap... 

Further reading:

Butlin, Billy, 1982, The Billy Butlin Story, A Showman to the End, London: Robson Books.

Kerry, Matthew, 2012, The Holiday and British Film, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

Walton, John K., 2000, The British Seaside, Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Snapshots from Bridlington

Scarborough may have been the first seaside resort in the UK, but Bridlington tourist board will have you know that the first record of surfing in Britain occurred in Brid in 1890. According to local legend, Brothers HRH Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole and HRH Prince David Kawananakoa were studying in the UK and ‘probably made their own surfboards with timber bought from a Bridlington boat-builder’.

Bridlington is on the East Yorkshire coast, south of Scarborough and Filey, and divided from those coastal bays by the magnificent Flamborough Head.

If you arrive here by train you will discover what is possibly the best station refreshment room in England. The Station Buffet is packed with all sorts of interesting paraphernalia and Brief Encounter (1945) springs to mind…

On my previous visit to Brid I called in at the Beside the Seaside museum. In 2016, alas, I found that it had closed, but I have a photo of an exhibit that was housed there in 2009.

Reconstruction of a seaside guest house at Beside the Seaside, 2009

A short walk up the promenade to Sewerby will take you to a Model Village and Tea Gardens. It’s just the kind of attraction that make seaside resorts so special, as if time has stood still, and yet it is still appealing to all generations of customers. I noted that the miniature art shop here is run by an ‘iPad artist’ – a nod to local resident David Hockney.

There are some great examples of seaside architecture in Bridlington, from a building that is deliberately constructed to resemble a boat (complete with mast outside), to the beautifully curved Belvedere Café at the end of the south beach. It has steps wrapped around it’s left side that take you onto a viewing platform on the roof.

Some rather grand houses overlook the sands on the south beach.

And there are some fine examples of beach huts.

If you are looking for a retro treat, Topham’s Ice Cream Parlour (set 1947) is worth a visit. Hot drinks are served in glass mugs here just as they should be, and there are banoffee sundaes and knickerbocker glories on the menu. 

When I was in there, an elderly gentleman wearing a suit, and pinned with an enormous badge reading ‘Sweet Sixteen’ came in. A member of staff exclaimed, “You look very dapper today”, and the gentleman started singing. I didn’t bother going to see the show at the Spa; I had my entertainment for the price of an ice cream...