The British seaside: Dud or dud?

It's called BORTH!!!

http://completelyinthedark.com/main.php?g2_itemId=12896

Scarborough :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert_Brodrick

v interesting architect

The Leeds Corn Exchange and the Grand Hotel at Scarborough are classic buildings imo

Burgh Island and its magical tide-defeating monster tractor was on Coast, it is definitely real.

Do find it's odd how Coast has made all this sort of thing almost-fashionable again, but still not quite.

i think stuff like The Idler and The Chap and I suppose before them a bunch of twee indie miserabilists have been repping for the British seaside for a good while now but a) semi-ironic nostalgia not really most people's cup of tea and b) the reality of lots of places is just a little too grim to be totally fun times.

i like grim and unironic nostalgia so i'm good tho.

Very good book on This Sort Of Thing by a pal:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yvVAEBKoL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

6 months living in Hastings/St Leonards cured me of any lingering nostalgie, I have to say.

aren't they full of junkies

Thing is, it depends on if you mean 'the seaside' as in pleasure beach tacky shit type way, or 'the seaside' as in the bit of land that is right next to the sea. Britain has some great moody tempestuous bits of sea.

but seaside as a word definitely implies "tacky" pleasure beach shit and the decayed corpse of the 50s and 60s before society became a hole.

I don't know that it does. Or is there another word you're thinking of, that implies "seaside" as being "bit of land by sea" without that connotation? Because I don't have that automatic assumption. I don't get that automatic association unless I see it used in a phrase like "faded seaside glamour" and the like. It comes from context.

I suppose I like a bit of crumbling maritime heritage, harbour walls being pounded back to nature, piers falling slowly into the sea - but that's because I'm not really one of those people who goes to the sea for "fun in the sun, swimming etc." but I go to the sea for bleakness, windswept desolation, THE SKY IS BIGGER THAN YOU, THE SEA IS BIGGER THAN YOU, time will eat you all up, you are as dust in the wind, oh look on my works ye puny humans and despair.

Because that's what I go to the seaside for, really, not to sit in a canvas deckchair with rose-tinted sunglasses on, reminiscing of parish holidays in the 70s. But then again, I only ever really go to "seaside resorts" in the off season because it's the desolate atmosphere that I like.

Does anyone remember when they tried to revive that CITV show called Knightmare back one summer in the mid-'90s with a one-off Seaside special?

Gameplay was more or less the same - one guy had to walk around the levels while his teammates guided him with instructions from afar, except instead of a large viking helmet he wore an outsized kiss-me-quick hat and carried a stick of rock. Tregard was dressed in a lifejacket and sat quite high up in an adirondack chair, helping the team with cautions like "Warning team, the tide is coming in!" and then you'd hear a ship's horn blow in the distance, a bit like when the hobgoblins would come in the original. I remember they managed to get rid of a fearsome dog walker with "Spellcasting: J-E-L-L-Y-F-I-S-H".

Shame it didn't really take off. My mate reckons they also did a 1978 version where you carried a fondue set and wore a huge permed wig, but I don't believe him.

I think that the connotation of deckchairs and funfairs and sand castles etc is definitely strong with 'seaside', but I can't think of an alternative word for 'bit of land next to the sea'. Maybe just 'sea'? Or 'coast', I guess?

Definitely look for the same thing as you, KDT. The vastness gives me the fear, but in a beautiful way.

xpost no! Are you sure that's real? I've always thought they should revive Knightmare, though. I loved that shit.

Britain has some great moody tempestuous bits of sea.

Well, we are surrounded by the stuff

Coast, yes.

The Coast will do. "Going for a run to the Coast", I'm sure we used to do that on a Sunday back in the day.

"coast" or "seashore" for the Romantic bits. or even "strand" eh? I guess "seaside" is too close to "Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the" for me to shake the resort connotations

... run in the car, in case there's any confusion. When I think of Ayrshire, which is where we used to go a run to, then I think "Coast" not "Seaside"

"Seaside" to me is yes, wurlitzers, crap fairground rides, icecreams and deckchairs, kind of creepy/depressing '60s locarno kitchen sink stuff. "Beach" is B-52s spastic post-punk jellyfish wabbing. "Coast" is rocks and rain and Scottish people in anoraks telling you about "the awesome power of the sea" and shit.

B-52s spastic post-punk jellyfish wabbing

OK, fair enough. Understand the distinction.

Definitely more of a The Coast fan than a Seaside fan then.

For me, emil.y it's more like it *removes* THE FEAR from me, in a beautiful way. Like all the petty problems that buzz around my head and fill up my consciousness, they just evaporate, because in 200 years, 500 years, this sea will still be here, but everything I've ever done, and even this lump of rock I'm standing on, it will all be eroded away and that is just so comforting and calming and gives one a real sense of perspective.

I think that's what Romantic poets used to call The Sublime before appreciation of that became Quite So Utterly Utter.

B-52s spastic post-punk jellyfish wabbing

Give me rocks and rain and Scottish people in anoraks any day.

Scottish people in anoraks

Not the fuggin' Pastels again

I actually really like the seaside aesthetic though. I also like the spastic B-52s jellyfish wabbing, despite living very much in land. When I eventually start this band, we're going to take direct influence from "Rock Lobster" and The Special's "Friday Night, Saturday Morning", thus marrying both the American beach and the British seaside. Maybe add a toxic take on South Pacific too. We will rule the waves.

a littoral--maritime themed british indie band seems like a really amazing and novel idea

Not the fuggin' Pastels again

http://www.open2.net/open2static/source/file/root/0/58/52/240936/neilscotland.jpg

"The past is a disaster now (preferably with TALL SHIPS crashing into LIGHTHOUSES)
The future's coming faster now (automated foghorns)
Let's just go and get a beer (make mine a Doombar)"

When I eventually start this band, we're going to take direct influence from "Rock Lobster" and The Special's "Friday Night, Saturday Morning", thus marrying both the American beach and the British seaside.

http://www.chartstats.com/image/r8411_300.jpg

Do find it's odd how Coast has made all this sort of thing almost-fashionable again, but still not quite.

Perfectly happy with this state of affairs tbh.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/4/19/1271691257621/Blackpool-beach-in-1982-b-001.jpg

I'm gonna get that blown up and stuck on my wall. Actually, might just use it as a desktop background, same difference IG.

haha! that dog's having a wazz! YESSS!

It is Chris Steele-Perkins, I went to the exhibition, and that one was my favourite

Martin Parr does some good seaside pics too

http://bp0.blogger.com/_023w4hdG0iI/RkANGps474I/AAAAAAAABzg/vdWoTKONP2s/s1600-h/Martin_Parr_The_Last_Resort_1145_67.jpeg

http://blog.happyfoto.at/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Fotoausstellung-in-Wien_Martin-Parr.jpg
http://www.seminario.edu.uy/bibliowp/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/mp3imagen1.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TSMBHnhrP4Y/TUbqnBapo1I/AAAAAAAAApM/Cn5yfnoI174/s1600/IMG.jpg

was it martin parr who released those books of boring postcards too? (love all these photos btw)

I think so, try an image search for john hinde, for postcards

Yes it was...he did 3 of them (boring, boring USA, and boring Germn postcards)

He also compiled a book of Butlins postcards (from John Hinde as Proger mentions)which is excellent.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41N5gSUU%2BoL._SS500_.jpg

I prefer these to his actual photos tbh, which seem to border on 'LOL working class people', although tbf he does also do 'LOL rich people' and 'LOL people who want to be middle class'.

As for Martin Parr, I am not sure he has an agenda to mock working-class people having days out, it is more a "what are people like?" in glorious technicolor.

http://www.dimagemaker.net/ktml2/images/uploads/exhibit/parr/509.jpg?0.24452934250892122

http://www.hipshots.co.uk/images/parr3.jpg

Some of his stuff I like, some I am not sure about, but I know they are all better than any pics I take. But I always like the seagull one http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/work/image/104974/qg7swq/Seagulls.jpg as something you see in every UK seaside town and probably have done every day for 60 years or so.

yeah i don't necessarily see mockery so much as ultra-candid frozen moments. the old couple in the caff is very tender in a way.

I've actually met him and he says "yeah, i totally am taking the piss, I mean have you seen these people...disgusting savages imo"...no, he didn't say that he gave a very eloquent and thoughtful answer to a similar question (not from me, but from someone who who articulate proper) much along Noodles lines - and, it's a fair point that this is what it actually looks like sometimes. But I'm still a bit uneasy with a lot of them. Maybe I've seen so many similar pics that it seems too easy? I don't know, I'm rambling.

Anyway, I do admire his ability to get up close though. Ballsy without being obnoxious.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulrussell/303499383/

Woman "Don't look now love but I think that bloody Martin Parr is behind us"

Man "He's been at it all day, lets just get it over with"

Woman "I'll look northern and you say something parochial"

Man "right. Aye up lass, take in that bracing air, you'll sleep well tonight."

Woman "good, I think he's gone"

Man "Oh shit...look who is coming now. it's that damn Alan Bennett and he has his notebook out. I had better start reciting Alfred and the Lion.

Albert sorry. Used to hear it a lot in Filey.

There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh-air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Alberttheir son.

A grand little lad was their Albert
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
'E'd a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle
The finest that Woolworth's could sell.

They didn't think much to the ocean
The waves, they was fiddlin' and small
There was no wrecks... nobody drownded
'Fact, nothing to laugh at, at all.

So, seeking for further amusement
They paid and went into the zoo
Where they'd lions and tigers and cam-els
And old ale and sandwiches too.

There were one great big lion called Wallace
His nose were all covered with scars
He lay in a som-no-lent posture
With the side of his face to the bars.

Now Albert had heard about lions
How they were ferocious and wild
And to see Wallace lying so peaceful
Well... it didn't seem right to the child.

So straight 'way the brave little feller
Not showing a morsel of fear
Took 'is stick with the'orse's 'ead 'andle
And pushed it in Wallace's ear!

You could see that the lion didn't like it
For giving a kind of a roll
He pulled Albert inside the cage with 'im
And swallowed the little lad... whole!

Then Pa, who had seen the occurrence
And didn't know what to do next
Said, "Mother! Yon lions 'et Albert"
And Mother said "Eeh, I am vexed!"

So Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Quite rightly, when all's said and done
Complained to the Animal Keeper
That the lion had eaten their son.

The keeper was quite nice about it
He said, "What a nasty mishap
Are you sure that it's your lad he's eaten?"
Pa said, "Am I sure? There's his cap!"

So the manager had to be sent for
He came and he said, "What's to do?"
Pa said, "Yon lion's 'eaten our Albert
And 'im in his Sunday clothes, too."

Then Mother said, "Right's right, young feller
I think it's a shame and a sin
For a lion to go and eat Albert
And after we've paid to come in!"

The manager wanted no trouble
He took out his purse right away
And said, "How much to settle the matter?"
And Pa said "What do you usually pay?"

But Mother had turned a bit awkward
When she thought where her Albert had gone
She said, "No! someone's got to be summonsed"
So that were decided upon.

Round they went to the Police Station
In front of a Magistrate chap
They told 'im what happened to Albert
And proved it by showing his cap.

The Magistrate gave his o-pinion
That no-one was really to blame
He said that he hoped the Ramsbottoms
Would have further sons to their name.

At that Mother got proper blazing
"And thank you, sir, kindly," said she
"What waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy lions? Not me!"

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRdHS9mztSkLovkSK99PirEf-Je9ePiBHciQSqBd-xpTCc3CnSJdg&t=1

More "coast" than "seaside" but has anyone been to the islands off Pembrokeshire?

went to Caldey Island as a wee child, memories are mixed up with other places but I know there was a monastery and you could walk there when the tide was out and i got a sweet patch for the back of my Wrangler jacket.

We're just booked a Northumberland coastal holiday that seemed very reasonable. No idea how nice it is going to be - we've heard positive things - but is alongside beaches rather than cliffs. I guess it depends where you are travelling from.

I have the sudden inexplicable desire to go to some godforsaken faded seaside glamour bit of the Essex coast.

Like, Shoeburyness or Walton-on-the-Naze or somewhere. Where has a good pier?

I'm going to yarmouth on Friday who's gonna stop me

Which Yarmouth? I <3 the Isle of Wight Yarmouth but not sure about East Anglia.

Essex walks website recommends me Clacton-on-Sea to Walton-on-the-Naze, 7 mile walk taking in TWO piers. Has anyone done this? It's a sea wall, so it should be pretty much flat, the whole way.

(I confess, half the reason I want to go to Walton-on-the-Naze is the name, and the other half is Tracy Jacks.)

Did you ever do The Broomway?

No, it seemed semi-suicidal to attempt by myself.

Kinda want to do the Saxon church walk on the sea wall at Bradwell (another Macfarlane rec) but the train is quite some way away.

There look to be guided walks.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/apr/15/britains-coastline-captured-in-atmospheric-photos-for-rnli-contest-in-pictures

I'm not a big fan of guided walks, really. They never seem to go at the right speed.

Those are beautiful photos; that last one of Sennen looks like a John Martin painting. Which I guess Sennen often does, in a storm.

"They never seem to go at the right speed."

^ Yes, this.

bb, I mean the norfolk yarmouth, as it's near me. I'll probably wander over to hemsby or somewhere once I've checked in at the hotel.

Can anyone recommend a cottage by the (UK) coast, that might be nice/available towards the end of this month ... ?

budget?

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/3414940?s=rPlF

We'd found somewhere in Norfolk for £400 ... but then it was cancelled to be refurbished.

That does look quite nice.

Sorry djh, I just saw this - I go to the Suffolk coast from time to time, Southwold, Aldeburgh, Orford etc, and there quite a few airbnb places for below £400 if you go out of season.

Was in Rhyll last week. It was like a place just recovering from a nuclear or zombie apocalypse. Sea was out and there's several bits of front between the last houses and the littoral, and it felt desolate and hopeless beyond belief. Only saw one or two other people on the front itself, usually negotiating various awkward bits of front infrastructure (two main roads either side of a promenade, then beach), sitting for about ten minutes at a bus stop as if waiting for a bus out of the place, but then moving on. A couple went into the dark entrance of the otherwise closed looking 'Seaworld' aquarium. An old man on a mobility scooter made incredibly slow progress by the main road.

On the way out passed one of the holiday camp resorts, looking very much generally like military camps, apart from various large cartoon characters on each set of huts giving big thumbs up etc.

I grew up in a Devon seaside town. The British seaside is awful and soul crushing. The coast, on the other hand, is wonderful.

We spent a beautiful week on the north Norfolk coast (Stiffkey); we've just booked a week on the Lincolnshire coast for the first week in January. Have never been to Lincolnshire before (and have never met anyone who has).

So ... if you were in Whitby but finding it a bit impossible (too busy, too difficult to physically distance) where would you go? Seaside/coast would get bonus points but anywhere to avoid people, really? Entertaining a six year old gets more points.

Back to Transylvania?

Not an easy task w/ the kicker of entertaining a child! If Whitby's too busy, Robin Hood's Bay probably will be as well, though there is a pretty long stretch of beach. You could go down the coast a bit further and have a stroll around the amazing Ravenscar Hall hotel (the gardens are free to roam around iirc, last time I was there) and it has amazing views.

Your best bet probably could be the Folling Foss Tea Garden, a really nice tea garden in the forest w/ lots of room for kids to run around or do whatever it is kids do :) And for you to enjoy the sights and nature as well (and some grub). Website is here

*Falling Foss, that is

That looks so idyllic. I cannot possibly express how much I want to be sitting outside a tea room in a forest right now.