All Set For a Week in Great Yarmouth, 2002

Saturday 17 August 2002. We had booked a week's stay in a B&B in Great Yarmouth, a well remembered childhood holiday town for both myself and Miss Franny, though if we ever caught a glimpse of each other during those childhood years, it passed us by completely...

Apart from its own attractions, Great Yarmouth is a convenient spot to do a bit of touring around Norfolk and Suffolk in a car with many activities and places of interest, some of which we'll visit during the week. The first thing we did on arrival though was book front row seats for a couple of shows.

Next, a nostalgic look at Joyland which is just next to the Britannia Pier. It seems amazing, but all those rides were them same when I was a little lad. They are just a tad more expensive per ride than they were then but I suppose wages are a tad more than they were back then too. The sight and sound of the snails in particular took me right back to the late 1950s...

Quite a lot of everything else had changed. There were still bowling greens but they were by far fewer in number. The putting greens had gone in favour of a large scale crazy golf course themed on pirates. Er... Miss Franny, why have I got a crow's nest coming out of my head...?

The Wellington Theatre wasn't presenting any shows. In fact the big difference between Great Yarmouth of the 1950s-60s and the 21st century is the unbelievable loss of live shows. This isn't unique to Great Yarmouth, but the town had a huge number of theatres as I remember it, now either disappeared or turned into cinemas or just plain derelict and empty. The Britannia Pier was alone in presenting shows and these were mainly short-runs, not a summer season as such.

A reverse bungee ride occupied what I think was another putting green. At twenty five pounds a go (what???) it would have taken far more money at a quarter of the price as it was unsurprisingly standing empty for most of the time.

Had it been twenty five pence a go I still don't think I would have been tempted somehow...

Up at Botton Bros Pleasure Beach (or down at - to me, living on the west coast it was easy to mix up north and south on the east coast) the Roller Coaster has a brakeman and the quality of the ride depends on his skill. It can be a thrilling ride, but I had in distant past years seen riders having to get out and push from the bottom of a dip due to the brakes being applied a bit too much.

Heading back down north (huh?) we passed the Winter Gardens at the side of Wellington Pier and thought we would come back for a spot of evening's refined drinkies.

There were a couple of girls singing to backing tracks and they were quite pleasing to the ear, though the P.A. system required you to be more or less opposite them to hear without some form of distortion. It was a promising start to a week's holiday.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton

Saturday 26 August 2023. After the excitement of finding the Red Arrows were giving a display a couple of hours after arriving at Sidmouth, we woke early the following morning with time for a sniff of air before breakfast.

Sidmouth early in the morning before breakfast. There has been a little rain but it is brightening up. Our room was on the second floor with windows across from the bed with a view of a brick wall 6 feet away and another window on the right hand wall with a view of a car park where apparently there had been a fight during the night. We never heard it. In fact there was screaming and shouting a few doors down from us. We never heard that either...

There are a few people wandering about and even a few brave, or stupid, people swimming in the sea. We were to find that about half a dozen people were swimming every day in the sea around this time.

Breakfast over, our first excursion takes us to Budleigh Salterton, a small village with pebble beach and a stream running down the main street down a culvert. It's still early enough that some shops and cafes are still closed and we opt to walk down the hill from the bus stop to the beach.

Just about everybody else had headed down a side street from the coach drop-off to the cliff tops, seen in the middle distance. We reached the beach and found some colourful kayaks high up on the shingle and we have to take care walking because of the wire cables used to winch boats up the high shingle bank of pebbles from the sea.

Lobster or crab traps are piled up waiting to be baited and taken out. As they sit on the sea bed they are attached to floats, balloons or empty plastic containers painted bright colours.

Other assorted bits of fishermens' gear was on the beach, tubs, various sticks, bits of tarpaulin and a barrier to fool the fish/crabs/lobsters into taking any signed diversions into the traps...

We had a cuppa in a cafe as we climbed back up the hill from the seafront and then spent the few minutes left before the coach came to pick us up, sitting on the nearby cliff top overlooking the sea. I had forgotten my hat and the sun was fierce on my stylishly bald head. I put my hood up and did my monk impression - I'm a green monk - a recycledtine...

Coach Trip to Sidmouth, August 2023, Index

Bridlington, Yorkshire, 3-8 June 2023

Saturday 3 June 2023. After Great Yarmouth we had just two days at home then set off for Bridlington, again on the east coast. Stand by for more icicles...

We had two days at home to wash clothes, refuel the car and call in to visit my Mum before heading out again across the country but this time more or less in a straight line across from West to East.

The weather was pretty similar to Great Yarmouth with the exception that the sun was also hiding from us. A mix of grey skies, great gusts of wind and the occasional flying seagull dropping somewhere alarmingly close meant layering up. T-shirt, hoodie and lightweight jacket wasn't cutting it. I bought a new heavier jacket before the shivering stopped. I started to sketch this scene of the harbour, sitting on a bench on one of the narrow piers with a "pirate" ship taking punters on a "10-minute cruise in the bay" from just behind me.That would be 2 minutes out of the harbour wall, 3 minutes along the bay, with 5 minutes doing the same in reverse then. At least it was twice as long as you got on a Speedboat ride...

We opted for a 2.5 hour cruise on the newly refurbished Yorkshire Belle to see the seabirds at Bempton Cliffs. This was more like it. We sat on the foredeck, huddled up against the wind, watching the odd seal surface briefly before diving to shout to its mates "No... still cold!". One did a spectacular backflip right next to us, luckily away from the boat - I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to a seal landing on my lap! Then past Flamborough Lighthouse and the commentary started to mention birds, guillemots, kittywakes, gannets and occasionally the odd puffin. I couldn't tell them from guillemots unless you managed to spot the distinctive beak. They are a lot smaller than people think. Perhaps because they look a bit like penguins you expect them to be that sort of size. Anyway, whenever the commentator announced a puffin there was a chorus of "Oh yes! There!" whilst I was looking all over the place, spotting a bird, looking for the beak only to find it was a gull of some sort...

Our time at the cliffs came to an end and we turned round for the trip back. We gave up our spot and went into the enclosed deck where the heady odour of oil and marine fuel started to waft across us. Just out of dry dock, the boat had sprung an oil leak. We made it back to Bridlington and the Yorkshire Belle stayed where it was for the next few days whilst it got sorted out. As I stepped onto the pier a seagull welcomed me back. Well... front actually... "Oh! That's lucky!" called a middle-aged chap. "Yes, this too!" I laughed, nudging him over the edge of the pier. "Make a wish!" I advised just before he hit the water... (Disclaimer: The later part of this paragraph may not be strictly true...)

Monday 5 June 2023. We caught a bus out to Bridlington Old Town and Priory. I'll deal with the Priory in a separate article. Bridlington Old Town turned out to be just the one street. It was Monday. Most of the shops are closed on Monday... Never mind, we reached the end of the road and then crossed a main road upon which we were at the gates to the Priory.

The remaining bits of the Priory survived the Reformation being kept in use as a parish church. This was the Gateway to the Priory that apparently housed a museum. We didn't know that at the time...

Four beautiful white horses were being groomed on the green before the Priory. When we came back out later, a white horse-drawn hearse was standing waiting to be hitched up.

Plein air sketch of the harbour. I did some of the pencil bits in situ but it was numbingly cold. Too cold to sit for more than 30 minutes and I took the photo seen at the top of the page, then did quite a lot in the hotel bar, squinting at the tiny screen of my phone. I finished the last third of the pencilling on our last day. Luckily my original bench was free. Actually they were all free, no-one else was so foolish as to sit in the cold and wind. I did the colour in the bar on the last night.

Bridlington, 2023 Index

Great Yarmouth, 25-31 May 2023

Thursday 25 May 2023. We set off for a week's holiday to Great Yarmouth in sunny Norfolk.

Well, sunny but just a bit breezy if you know what I mean. We had a hotel room with sea view which meant a grand view of a vast car park with a narrow line of sea behind it. Some of this seascape was taken up by Scroby Sands, a sandbank that as a kid I remember being full of seals with regular boat trips out from the beach to enable you to look at them. It's now full of basking wind turbines, the vibrations of which somewhat put the seals off anything but a short stop to catch their breath.

The hotel was nice though, it was our third time of visiting it and it has a few quirks like an ancient lift that you have to manually close the doors of - outer door and an inner cage door. If any of these doors are not shut tight the lift refuses to work, so sometimes when someone gets out on the third floor and leaves the door slightly ajar, no one can use the lift until someone has hoofed it up the stairs to shut the door.

The first night we were sitting quietly in the bar and Miss Franny saw one of these being made for someone else. Apart from a few dubious floaters (coffee beans, always highly-prized for a quick crunchy snack) it looked really good and she was quite appreciative, delicately spitting out the rock-hard beans. I'm sure it wasn't really her fault that one smashed the full pint glass of beer of the chap sitting opposite, bringing a look of swift surprise and soggy comprehension to his face...

Holidays for us have become much less exotic than in recent years. Now carrying a cancer about, I'd rather not pay more for insurance than I would for an actual cruise holiday and I find that walking any distance is more a series of short hops from one bench to another a few yards further along. A fair bit of pain comes on holiday with me now too along with a daily unknown quantity of lightning bolts to the side that can make me yelp like a kitten whose tail you've just trodden on.

So Miss Franny ruled out any thoughts I might have had about trying this out. It's ok Miss Franny... I wasn't really having that many thoughts about seriously wanting to go on it anyway. Interestingly whilst sitting nearby and listening to passers by, it was mainly small kids and teenagers who fancied going on it whilst Dads almost invariably said "Oh no, I'm not going on that - I can't even look up to watch it without getting light-headed!"

Miss Franny spent several interludes having sat me down on benches outside cafes, on the Promenade or near the shopping centre and/or markets, where she disappeared to empty her purse and bank account whilst I sat marvelling at what people seem to think makes them look more attractive these days. I've never been a fan of tattoos I'm afraid, but am happy to overlook them on others. The current fad seems to be to cram as many small and totally incompatably random subjects as possible onto shins. Weird.

Anyway, many a time Miss Franny would return to find me deep in conversation with someone who had sat down next to me, or had a dog that liked the look of me and rushed over, or in one case almost knocked my cafe table over in what appeared to be an unplanned and unexpected sudden woosh of motorised mobility scooter. Why such things, intended for use on pavements and around vulnerable pedestrians, are designed to zip around at 20 miles per hour with first point of contact at shin or heel height I'm not too sure. Perhaps it's the manufacturers' way of ensuring future custom? In any case, on Miss Franny's return I would be greeted with "I always find you talking to people when I get back!"

This made me laugh. My phone ringtone is a snatch of the chorus of a 1932 comic song by Al Bowlly and Leonard Henry called "Meet Me Tonight in the Cow Shed"... You'll find it on YouTube if you want. This was up near the old Windmill Theatre, now an indoor crazy golf course... There used to be so many theatres and summer season shows in Great Yarmouth that you could see a show headed by famous household names just about every night during a week's stay without repeating a show. Now it's just the odd karaoke bar. The Britannia Pier still has its theatre but there were no shows until July and then it seemed that they only did the one night before moving somewhere else. A great shame.

We did a couple of bus rides out during the week. One to Norwich to see the castle. We saw the outside covered in scaffolding but it was closed for the renovations. We went in the museum where I enquired about the 1549 rebellion led by Robert Kett who beseiged the city with a few thousand peasants, taking the castle and cathedral during the short reign of Henry VIII's son, King Edward VI. Not only was there no reference to it anywhere, the girl at the counter had never heard of it. There's an excellent novel about it in C.J. Sansum's Tombland, one of the Shardlake series of novels.

Also we took the car out one day and went for a ride on the North Norfolk Steam Railway at Sheringham. A couple of trains were running and the photo shows the steam locomotive Black Prince at the terminus, reversing back past the train to be re-attached ready to pull the string of carriages back to Sheringham.

I found the courage to brave the wind towards the back end of the week to sit and draw this sketch of the pier and bowling green with a couple of tea huts on the Promenade. I did all of the colouring in the hotel bar on the last night to the great interest of some members of a coach party. They turned out to be a County Bowling Team which led to a slightly surreal conversation thus: "Is that where we were playing this afternoon?"

Well for one I'm not a member of your party so I have no idea where you were playing and for two, there was no one actually playing on this green and if they had have been then the wind would have been blowing their bowls off course... (The wind snapped a sapling tree in half opposite our bedroom window one night!) Anyway the following morning one of the blazered gents turned up to breakfast with a wooden spoon around his neck. "Did you win that as a trophy?" I asked cheerfully. He looked at me with a heavy sigh. "We won it for coming last," he said, "I have to wear it now until the next match..."

Holidays and Day Trips in the UK

From Bognor to Brighton

Monday 19 February 1996. The weather forecast for the week says snow will move in from the east. We decide that it would probably be best to go east today, before the weather comes too close!

A glance out of the hotel bedroom window before we venture down to breakfast shows us this dredger battling against the current as it makes it's way into the shelter of the harbour.

This is the delightfully deserted beach of Bognor Regis, whose inhabitants obviously were too wise to set foot out of doors. The sun was undoubtedly shining but the temperature was hovering around the freezing point. We didn't stay too long on the beach, I have to confess. I taped the surf onto Capt Slog (my portable cassette recorder) for a short while, but then a freezing cold wave submerged my trainers and the shock made me lose interest in sound effects...

Fran wasn't all that sympathetic as I explained what happened! We wandered back up towards the Promenade and found a cafe that was open. I thought the sign for ice-cream was a bit optimistic but we had a coffee in glass cups that instantly brought memories of the 1960s back to me. Of cafes with jukeboxes and milky coffee in glass cups and saucers and the sound of the Espresso machine behind the counter... So after the coffee we reminded ourselves just how cold it was and decided to bid farewell to Bognor Regis, reflecting that there was probably more life in the empty lobster pots!

After a warm in the car we found ourselves in Brighton, where I marvelled at the splendour of the Royal Pavilion, built at the whim of the Prince Regent, later George IV. It gave him an excuse to get out from the under the gaze of disapproval and spend his time cavorting with his mistress, Mrs Fitzherbert, or eating and drinking himself into a right royal stupor.

We toyed with the idea of walking round the Pavilion but a Closed sign changed our minds for us and we went off in seach of other equally splendid ways of keeping warm and amused. George spent a fortune - several fortunes - on it both inside and out with rooms wallpapered in specially produced Chinese-inspired designs. Only a couple of streets away from the seafront, Queen Victoria was later to hate it and the constant passing curiosity of locals and tourists.

We had a look round the town, which was pretty much deserted and very very cold. We came back to the Seafood Restaurant later for some tea.

The Palace Pier. Apart from a short length nearest the Promenade entrance it was closed, as was it's companion pier a bit further west and most of the seafront attractions. Shame really because I wanted to see the museum of antique amusement arcade machines. We found somewhere to have a coffee. Plenty of warm drinks and even the odd snack or bowl of soup were necessary to keep warm. Despite the sun which had been out for most of the day, the temperature was still stubbornly down towards the freezing point!

We went round the Sea Life Centre which I thought was supposed to be the biggest in England. lt may well be, but most of it was blank corridors with not even a poster to brighten up the walls let alone a fish tank. Most of it looked like the old dingy cinema that the building was originally designed for. Walking through the glass tunnel made me realise how spoilt we had been going to Sea World in Florida as here there were many more people in the tunnel than fish outside it. The biggest shark looked as though it would choke on a toe...

Return to England South Coast, 1996 Index Page

Scarborough With A Hint Of Bridlington.

We had a weekend away this week, travelling to Bridlington on Friday for two nights. We stayed at a nice enough B&B which was just a bit let down by the shower unit in our room. This was plumbed straight into the water supply. This meant that there were separate hot and cold taps and the room was at the end of a long corridor so no matter where or how you set the taps, the water falling on you alternated every few seconds between freezing cold and scalding hot... Ah well, it was cheap and cheerful - if you don't count the owner's Dad who answered the door at night by saying "I hope you haven't woken our granddaughter up!!!"

I had a camera free day on Friday which is when we took advantage of some bright sunny weather in Bridlington. I had the sketch pad with me but I didn't get round to doing anything with it all weekend - Brid was crowded and seating by the harbour was at a premium and there were hundreds of people trying to eat fish and chips before the somewhat aggressive seagulls got them first. Not everyone succeeded... I didn't fancy spending an hour sketching only for a blob of unmentionable to obscure the page, so I apologetically offer this effort from 1994.

If you want to eat fish and chips then Bridlington is your place. There is probably one fish and chip shop for every seagull. This is actually necessary as the amount of repeat trade they get must be incredible from people who have had (helpful hint on seagull fave method coming) a seagull fly down over their shoulder and land in the tray of fish and chips, snatching a beakful and taking off with the probable spilling of the rest of the tray for other seagulls to fight over.

We found an Italian restaurant called Leoz. Highly recommended! I had the chicken stroganoff and it was delicious.

On Saturday we decided to leave the car and take a bus to Scarborough. Between the two bus stations of Bridlington and Scarborough it is 17.1 miles. This should take around 30 minutes or less, but the bus does not exactly go straight there. The timetable suggested an hour and 25 minutes, but it took quite a bit longer than that in the event. We missed out on the front seats going, but managed to get them coming back. Some of the roads it turned aside onto to reach holiday camps were better than a ride on the roller coaster!

When we reached Scarborough the first building of note that I saw as we walked down from the bus station was this theatre. The original Stephen Joseph Theatre was Britain's first theatre in the round and was built on the first floor of the public library. It moved to a former boys' high school and subsequently in 1988 following the closure of the Odeon Cinema it moved here, opening in 1996.

We walked downhill past the theatre and along a shopping street, cutting off down a side road and finding ourselves near the Grand Hotel. There was a funicular railway going down the cliff to the beach but we opted to take the strenuous route - this being much less strenuous going down than coming up - where we did take the funicular!

So we set off down these steps, admiring the litter and the way that, at the bottom, the handrail stopped being black and instead was seagull-poo coloured to the encrusted state that the end of the railing had corroded altogether and had dropped off.

Scarborough has a South Bay and a North Bay. To someone who lives on the west coast like me, directions on the east coast always seem the wrong way round. Between the two bays is a huge but ruinous 12th century castle high on its hill which was once a hillfort from the Iron Age, a Roman signal point and the home of Norse invaders. A busy spot. In fact all of Scarborough seems a busy spot. There was hardly room on the beach for all the families, couples, and sunbathers to swing a bucket and spade. People lean on each side of a windbreak, at least half of them having underpaid for the privilege.

Amusement arcades line the other side of the road, facing the beach and harbour. They look like Blackpool of yesterday - modern fronts on the ground floor of old buildings. Yet sadly, the amusements are the modern boring collection of cranes and two pence piece pushers with the occasional video shoot-out or racing game. Where did all those pinballs go, which I so loved as a boy and which required skill of reflexes and knowledge of the laws of physics rather than mastery of a remembered past sequence?

The harbour holds a collection of boats from working fishing boats to day trip or half-hour trips round the bays. A marina serves those rich folks who like to boast they "have a boat at the seaside" but rarely can be bothered to move them.

It all makes for a very picturesque scene. In fact multitudes of scenes of water, old buildings, modern amusements, the inevitable fish and chips, and families relaxing.

There are so many architectural styles within a short stretch of road that it is hard to make sense of it. Odd little bits strike you as either pleasing or incongruous. Some manage both at the same time.

On the whole I quite liked it. There were plenty of benches to sit on without having to pay to hire a deck chair - though they were well over-subscribed and finding an empty one was usually the precursor to turning away again as some other foot-weary person or group dived upon the few inches of bare wooden slats.

In the harbour, a single formidable chunk of membrane and tentacles was pulsating and moving slowly round in circles, its progress impeded by the strength of the incoming tide matching its ability to swim against it. It may have been somewhat mollified by the steady and continuing chorus of exclamations and excited shouts of "Oh! Look!" that it caused.

We bought a drink at a cafe and sat on the harbour wall whilst we cooled off and rested our feet. Well... rested our feet anyway. There was no shade on the harbour wall and I was turning a splendid shade of bright red on this, our second day in the sun.

Just after the harbour is this delightful Coastguards' Hut. Do a search and you will find lots of photos of it but finding any textual references will take longer than I cared to spend. Very strange - you'd have thought someone would have thought it worthwhile to say something about it...

Crammed into the smallish space between the harbour and Coast Guard Station is a small funfair with a handful of rides mainly aimed at children.

We retraced our steps until we reached the flight of steps and then we stepped smartly on until we reached the funicular railway - known as the Central Tramway Company. The car was full, I wasn't able to get to the window to take a photo of the other car coming down towards us. There's something about funiculars that always appeals to me. The theory is that the weight of the descending car matches as near as possible the weight of the ascending car and therefore the power needed to operate is not as great as might be required for a single lift.

We had lunch and a quick look round the shops (not my idea...) and then caught the bus back to Bridlington. This time we managed to get the front seat upstairs and it was a fun ride back via all the side roads and holiday parks until we arrived back at Bridlington bus station.

We got back to find a collection of classic cars parked near the harbour, their owners sitting by them, listening to a karaoke set-up. Unfortunately as we got there we were "treated" to a man and woman singing Those Were The Days as a duet. It certainly wasn't how I remembered those days... We decided on an ice cream and the young girl serving laughed out loud when I asked for two cones and two pairs of ear plugs. We sat on the harbour wall for a while until a seagull, sated with a surfeit of fish and chips decided to splatter all over Miss Franny's hand... "Ooh, that's lucky!" I said, a second before the backhander...