Monday 17 December 2012

Dodging the Waves at Blackpool

March 1977, the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. We had moved to live in Blackpool the previous year and were getting used to living at the seaside.

We were expecting our first child in a month's time and were living with my parents who had a guest house on Trafalgar Road, just off the Promenade. One night at around 11:30pm I looked out of the window to see that the sea was flowing up the road! Waves and everything!

Luckily we fared better than we had feared. The cellar bar was flooded a bit and needed a lot of work, but the guest house was closed to visitors at the time so we had time to put it right. Others nearby were not so lucky and cellars were filled and adjoining walls were knocked down with the weight of the water.

This photo was taken the morning after and the sea wall had taken a bit of a battering from waves such as the one shown. In the photo you can clearly see bricks and chunks of stone and concrete torn from the Promenade, tramway and sea wall. I was unfortunate enough to be standing where one of these huge waves crashed over. It was like standing under a waterfall for a full five seconds. The weight almost knocked me off my feet. I realised then just how easy it would be for the sea to drag someone off their feet and through the railings that, at that time, lined the seafront from the South Pier all the way to the North Pier and a little way beyond.

The tide had gone down by now. But even so, the evidence of its power and surge were only too obvious. At the open air baths the car park was invisible due to the sea water having created a lake. At the entrance to the baths it was nine feet deep - the car park occupied a dip of land and the height of the bridge to the entrance was eight feet and ten inches. It now just appeared to be a path through the water.

Further south, some of the illuminations tableaux had not survived the night. Torn down by the splashing waves from the sea, they were pushed over to the wall by the side of the tram tracks.

The sea had crossed the road and flooded the Pleasure Beach lake almost to the height of the Log Flume aqueducts.

Up to the north of Blackpool, at Bispham, the sea had torn huge chunks out of the sea wall concrete. From that day, playing dodge the waves ceased to be fun for me. Water is heavy. In the thirty five years since I moved to Blackpool there have been far too many drownings. Treat the sea with respect. It will show you none...

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