The last resort
With summer approaching and everyone being both tired of lockdown and unsure of foreign travel, there has been a recent rash of lists of the "Top Ten British Seaside Resorts" published.
One, the consumers' and consumers' rights magazine Which? suggests, in descending order: Bamburgh, (Northumberland); Portmeirion, (Gwynedd, Wales); Dartmouth (Devon); North Berwick, (East Lothian, Scotland); St Mawes (Cornwall); Beer (Devon); St Andrews (Fife, Scotland); Aldeburgh (Suffolk); Southwold (Suffolk); Tenby (Pembrokeshire, Wales).
The lower half of their list of twenty consists of: Bognor Regis (Sussex); Clacton-on-Sea (Essex); Burnham-on-Sea (Somerset); Skegness (Lincolnshire); Fleetwood (Lancashire); Weston-Super-Mare (Somerset); Great Yarmouth (Norfolk); Margate (Kent); Morecambe (Lancashire); Minehead, (Somerset).
Of course, I'm sure there were various criteria employed—though they were not included in the source I saw. Amenity and fun would have been as important as location and beauty, no doubt. There will always be entries in such things with which one disagrees (sometimes all of them!)
Even so—and even as a White Rose Yorkshire Tyke—I'm disappointed to see Red Rose Lancashire's Morecambe relegated to such a low standing. In its favour are wide, apparently infinite beaches (but mind you don't become stranded: a number of inexperienced immigrant labourers drowned after being cut off by incoming tides while picking cockles in recent memory), incredible sunsets, its being the birthplace of nationally beloved comedian Eric Bartholomew (whose performing name—Eric Morecambe—he obviously took from his hometown), and the (sadly now-faded) Art Deco elegance of the Midland Hotel, which retains some sculpture by stone carver and type designer par excellence, Eric Gill (a grotesque pervert but supremely talented). The hotel unforgivably lost murals painted by the equally talented (but significantly less perverted) Eric Ravillious. On the downside, Morecambe is now quite run-down as are many resorts.
Skeggy, on the other hand, is sadly far more deserving of its low ranking, though EnglandExplore puts Skegness in their top ten!
Which are the British seaside resorts that I favour? Well, without wishing to be curmudgeonly, I'm probably less fond of resorts, as such, and inclined to more isolated locations (as you might imagine, there are accessible beaches and stretches of coast that are somewhat more removed from places of habitation).
Anyway, when one visits seaside towns, obviously has some bearing on how "throng" (busy) a place might be: my parents always chose to vacation in what I later discovered the industry refers to as the "shoulder", rather than high season. I mentioned my first holiday with my wife (then girlfriend) in Polruan was taken as late as November. Beaches near Polruan lay in relatively inaccessible coves and bays to the east, as I recollect, though a large, popular, sandy beach was located nearby to the west at Par Sands. We stuck to the small, rocky and inaccessible bays. Never-the-less, I can enjoy a popular place if it has enough individual character. There's no doubt that many coastal places in Cornwall and Devon are extremely picturesque and popular, and some—like Polperro—have made facilities for tourists to park unobtrusively outside of town in order to limit congestion and improve the ambience of their locality. All the same, visitors must outnumber locals by dozens-to-one during high season.
The North Devon Coast offers the delightful Clovelly, a village cascading down a narrow valley to a small beach, harbour and quay. Just a few metres eastward along Clovelly Bay, a waterfall also cascades onto the beach below. In private ownership, foresight from many years ago has ensured preservation. It is, of course, immensely popular with tourists but, again, vehicles park outside the village (and tourists are charged for entry). Some way to the northeast, on the other side of Clovelly Bay there are large beaches at Woolacombe, Westward Ho! (no, really, with an exclamation mark) and Saunton Sands.
Somewhat wilder, to the west of Clovelly—and rather less visited—is the Hartland promontory. Hartland village lies a couple of miles inland, with Hartland Point and its lighthouse on the north-western extremity of the headland, the Bristol Channel to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Hartland Quay—a small harbour since the 16th Century—is to the south of that on the western, Atlantic-facing coast. It's a location that has long been a favourite of a walking buddy of mine, and we've taken a couple of trips there. Not as pretty as the likes of Clovelly, it's attractive in a more rugged kind of way. South of the quay, another waterfall tumbles beachward. Hartland's parish church of St Nectan, dates from the 14th Century and, as many coastal or near-coastal churches do, has a notably tall tower, visible as a landmark from the sea. That didn't prevent shipwrecks, however, of which there have been many on this part of the coast over the years.
The wildness of the sea has proved inspirational to a number of writers hereabout, including the lesser-known Reverend Robert Stephen Hawker, eccentric vicar of nearby Morwenstow, and the somewhat better-known Ronald Duncan, librettist for Benjamin Britten, who in their respective times both sought poetic inspiration while sat in cliffside huts being lashed by stormy weather.
The Channel Islands have their charm, too. The islands lie closer to Brittany on the French mainland than to Great Britain. Strictly speaking they are Crown Protectorates and not part of the UK. Nor is their political relationship to the mainland a joint one, but rather more individual and complicated: the parliament of the States of Guernsey governs the islands of Guernsey, Herm, Jethou and Lihou. Nearby Sark and Alderney have their own parliaments, though they are part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Sark's parliament, the Chief Pleas, also governs the small island of Brecqhou, much to the chagrin of its owners, the toxic, media-owning Barclay brothers (or brother, as one has recently expired). Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands, has its own parliament and constitutes the Bailiwick of Jersey all on its own. I hope you got that 'cause I'll be asking questions later. Their non-UK status has allowed the Channel Islands to set their own tax laws and consequently become something of a haven for careful investors, or tax dodgers as we know them.
I've been happy to holiday in both Guernsey and Sark in the past and once spent a very pleasant day on the tiny island of Herm. A walk all around Herm's coast provides about five miles' worth of exercise and a stretch of it, Shell Beach, consists of fine white sand and a surprising quantity of small, colourful seashells arriving on the Gulf Stream. Novelist Compton Mckenzie was briefly a tenant on the island. Coincidentally, he was the author of Whisky Galore, the comic novel (later twice filmed) inspired by the real-life sinking of a ship laden with the cargo of the title in the islands of the far more northerly Outer Hebrides.
The Channel Islands still show evidence of German invasion during WWII, and various fortresses and military hospitals built by them (or, rather, their slave labour) now serve as museums of the nearly-five-year occupation (with thousands of people from the Channel Islands being deported to Germany during that time). Other coastal forts, predating that conflict, still punctuate the coastlines, some also being turned into museums of the maritime and so on.
Jersey is largest (and most commercial) of the islands, then Guernsey, Alderney and by the time you come down to Sark, they're becoming quite small. Jersey was the location for a popular and long-running BBC TV detective series, Bergerac.
Guernsey, at the time I stayed there, was a pleasant compromise of busy-ness and quiet, with some good, spacious beaches, countryside, museums and galleries (but I don't recall the food being much to write home about). The main town on the island, St Peter Port, has a harbour sheltering recreational vessels of the wealthy and not-so-wealthy, guarded by historic Castle Cornet, where cannon are ceremonially fired daily. Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, was resident on the island and his house is, as you might expect, a magnet for afficionados of French literature. Connected to Guernsey (at low tide) by a stone causeway, Lihou is a very small island that was (and perhaps still is) the source of seaweed for use as/in agricultural fertiliser. When I was there, signs warned visitors that missing the tide, causeway and access back to Guernsey would not entitle them to shelter at the farmhouse on the island, so they'd be in for a potentially miserable night until access again became available. It's a popular place for twitchers (birdwatchers), with seabirds—some of them rare—nesting on the almost completely unpopulated island. A medieval priory was founded on the island in the 12th Century but lays in unspectacular ruin. Founded from France and not laying in England, I don't know how the priory fared during the English Reformation and the subsequent Dissolution of Monasteries. As I understand it, the small community continued and the structure was ruined much later, after the site had been voluntarily abandoned. The weather was somewhat inclement on my visit and the small, windswept island, with its causeway and ruin, visually put me in mind of the 1989 Channel 4 production of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black. I rather expected the disturbing figure of the vengeful spirit to silently appear as in the film!
Alderney is somewhat wilder and less tourist orientated than even Guernsey. I have never visited but hope that I might.
The garments that I believe you chaps call "sweaters", we might also call "jumpers" or "pullovers" in the normal run of things (although, strictly speaking, a pullover is sleeveless). Additionally (and relating to the current context), we also call them "jerseys" (or sometimes—a term my father particularly used—"ganseys"). These last two are slight misappropriations as they are actually descriptive of particular knitted garments from those two Channel Islands (gansey being a corruption of Guernsey). The originals are usually knitted from wool or cotton to distinctive but plain patterns. The term jersey, especially, now has a ubiquitously wider meaning, making it synonymous with sweater, jumper, or pullover. It's also descriptive of that part of football (soccer) or rugby strip worn on the upper body.
Sark is almost two islands, Greater Sark and Little Sark are conjoined by a slightly vertiginous natural causeway, La Coupée, below which on the north-western side is La Grande Grève, a small bay with a beach, accessed by steep steps. The only motor vehicles allowed on Sark's dusty roads are farm tractors, one of which hauls the carriage for passengers up from the harbour to the rather charming main street, while another hauls the island's ambulance. At the tea shops on the main street, songbirds are so used to the clientele dining outside that they perch on tables awaiting the generosity of patrons. English is spoken on the island, but Sarkese/Sercquiais is the native language, a dialect of Norman French.
With no cars on the road, it's bicycles that are the hazard in Sark, both to pedestrians and riders. We heard of an American lady who was unused to the British/European arrangement for braking on cycles and, in trouble picking up speed downhill, had a fairly serious accident in collision with a stone wall. Someone close to your correspondent ("no names, no pack drill") rode their bike into a ditch within ten minutes of mounting the contraption. If bicycles are too dangerous, horse-drawn carriages abound and serve tourists in rides around the island, though "Shanks' pony" (walking) is always an option. Sark has two churches, a stone-built, two-cell jail (built in 1856) and a windmill (dating to 1571). It's a very relaxing place (especially out of season or after the day trippers from Guernsey have gone home—though they tend not to range very far when they arrive). Some years ago, Sark was designated the first Dark Sky Island, so it's a good place for stargazing. Author and illustrator Mervyn Peake, writer of the fantasy Gormenghast books, was a resident on the island and set his short comic novel Mr Pye on Sark (the book was later filmed in situ with Derek Jacobi in the titular role). Best food on the island is in the restaurant of Stocks Hotel, a very charming family-run place (recently expensively renovated I believe, so I daresay their prices have changed accordingly).
My wife and I had intended to honeymoon on Sark, but a necessary rescheduling made that an impossibility. Dubrovnik, in what was then Yugoslavia, was selected instead. The country blew up not long afterwards, but I'm fairly sure we didn't have anything to do with that.
Following are some photos from the Channel Islands. I don't know how much the place has changed since these photos were taken, but they are from a long time ago (though it doesn't seem like it). These scans are from enprints so, hopefully, you can forgive their less-than-first-rate appearance.
This is the view from St Peter Port, eastwards out to sea with the islands of Herm, Jethou and Sark, all clearly visible, left to right. Castle Pier connects Castle Rock (and its fortress, Castle Cornet) to mainland Guernsey and the Castle Breakwater extends further out to a lighthouse, with a companion sitting on the opposite side of the harbour entrance. IIRC, the photograph was taken from the top floor restaurant of the island's principal department store, Creasey's.
Castle Cornet from the breakwater, facing inland. The fortification was first built in the 13th Century and, with its defences improved over time, the castle saw much action, being captured and retaken many times. The French were not the only belligerents: during the English Civil War of the 17th Century, the castle (under control of Royalists) fired upon adjacent St Peter Port (the population thereof being Parliamentarians).
This photo was taken at the north end of Cobo Bay, on the northwestern coast of Guernsey. The area wasn't overly developed on my last visit, though I have no idea how well it's since resisted pressure to go that way. It was a very pleasant beach in those days. I remember it as a charming place and quite a sun trap, with a rocky headland (Grandes Rocques) at its northern extremity, rather like the surface of another world.
Here's a view from the tiny island of Herm back towards the northeastern tip of Guernsey. When I was scanning this photo, I noticed that there are people sat outside the white-painted cottage. I don't know if the house is or was let to holidaymakers, or if they were permanent residents, but it seems a pleasant place to be on such a fine day.
This is the exposed causeway from Guernsey to Lihou island, the tide obviously being out. The prominence at the far left of the island, if memory doesn't let me down, is what remains of the monastery on Lihou.
To give a little more meaning to scribbles above, here are two maps illustrating some of the places I referenced.
On the map above are the islands in nearest proximity to Guernsey. The coloured subdivisions don't relate to anything I mentioned but mark parish boundaries. St Peter Port is the principal town on Guernsey. La Coupée is the elevated causeway along a narrow natural ridge connecting the two halves of Sark.
The above map shows the main islands of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, with Alderney to the northeast of the group. The larger Channel Island of Jersey lies to the south. Guernsey lies about 35 miles west of the Cherbourg Peninsula and about 60 miles north-ish of St Malo.
The island of Lundy, sitting at the open end of the Bristol Channel as it flows into the Atlantic Ocean, is a sparsely populated island that I've never visited, although a friend of mine from teen years used to holiday there with her parents. The island is much visited by twitchers. Lundy is administered by the Landmark Trust who rent often unusual property to holidaymakers (sometimes at equally unusual locations like Lundy), including a defensive Martello Tower in Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. They used also to administer North Lees Hall near Hathersage in Derbyshire, a 16th Century Tower House that is believed to be the inspiration for the fictional Thornfield Hall, Rochester's home in Charlotte Bronté's novel Jane Eyre. Take a shufti (look) at their website for the range of eccentric and charming properties they offer for rent. The trust even owns a small number of properties in the USA, including the sometime home in Vermont of Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book and The Man Who Would be King.
The Scilly Isles, beyond Land's End in the Atlantic, have also survived without my ever setting foot on them. Unlike the Channel Islands, the Scillys are a part of the United Kingdom proper, largely owned by the Duchy of Cornwall (property of the Prince of Wales). Unsurprisingly, they are designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with a temperate-to-sub-tropical climate that makes it the warmest place in the British Isles. Flower farming and export was a significant industry in the very recent past, though I expect the usual bogeyman of Brexit will undoubtedly make this a more difficult enterprise. An erstwhile colleague of mine used to vacation with friends who farmed there. In those days, the islands were served by a British Airways helicopter service from the mainland which was discontinued after a crash in 1983 that killed twenty people. Thereafter the isles were served by ferry and fixed-wing aircraft, though I understand that another operator recently commenced helicopter services.
The eastern area of the south coast containing the towns of Brighton, through Pevensey and Bexhill to Hastings clearly made an impression on Brit comedian Spike Milligan, a writer/performer held to be a "great god to all of us" by Python John Cleese and equally admired by Michael Palin. Milligan was posted to the southeast coast early in his WWII service and it is featured affectionately in the first book of his war memoir (Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall). The area also crops up in the titles of his Goon Show scripts for radio: The Hastings Flyer—Robbed, The Pevensey Bay Disaster, The Dreaded Batter-Pudding Hurler of Bexhill-on-Sea, and The Phantom Head Shaver of Brighton. There was a time when I loved Milligan and his works, above even the Pythons, but it seems extremely old hat now, and I always turn them off if a repeat turns up on the radio—unsurprising, I suppose, considering the show was first broadcast before I was born. Of course, it was also a springboard for the immensely successful career of Peter Sellers.
Eastbourne is the location of the Devonshire Park Theatre and its over-excitable elderly audiences. The South Downs AONB extends to the west of the town, with Beachy Head being the highest chalk sea cliff in the UK, below which sits its lighthouse. Educated in Eastbourne, from the sublime to the ridiculous, were artist Eric Ravilious, author George Orwell, actor Prunella Scales and occultist Aleister Crowley. Also at school there in their respective times were doomed explorers Lawrence Oates of Scott's Antarctic expedition and George Mallory of a famously failed attempt at climbing Everest.
Glyndebourne House, between Eastbourne and Brighton and dating from the 16th Century, with its 20th Century purpose-built auditorium, is home to a renowned annual opera festival.
Brighton is known as "London-by-the-Sea", being just less than an hour away by rail. Although it features all the trappings of a traditional seaside town, Brighton is actually designated a city (Brighton and Hove), and tends to have a more cosmopolitan aspect with busier nightlife and whatnot. It's the seat of the UK's only Green Party MP, the impressive Caroline Lucas.
The town was favoured in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries by Prince George, later the fourth king of that name, and he had the exotic Royal Pavilion built there. Originally a (presumably quite grand) farmhouse, the site was first redeveloped in Neoclassical style. Then, presumably overcome by the fashion for "Orientalism", George later had his Marine Pavilion rebuilt by John Nash to include onion domes and other exotic features as the Royal Pavilion. This exoticism is carried through into what is now a nearby theatre/concert venue, the Brighton Dome. Elegant Georgian architecture is in no short supply in Brighton, while some sense of the character of its early village nature can be seen in its narrow Lanes, an area now consisting of boutique-ish retail and refreshment establishments.
Graham Greene set his excellent novel of guilt and retribution, Brighton Rock, in the town, a book which has been twice filmed. The first picture, by the Boulting Brothers (and released in the USA as Young Scarface), featured a very young Richard Attenborough as the repressed and psychopathic Pinkie Brown (and, although a more compassionate, happy ending was tacked on, it remains a very good film). The story was filmed again more recently—but far less successfully—wasting the talent of the wonderful Helen Mirren (doing her best with two characters scripted into one) and updating the setting from the 1940s to the early 1960s to include the then-fashionable seaside brawls between gangs of Mods and Rockers. It retains the more optimistic ending of the first picture. Interestingly, the second film was shot largely in Eastbourne (using that town's pier instead of the remaining pier at Brighton) as well as nearby Beachy Head. Brighton used to have two piers, but one was damaged beyond reclamation by fire in the 1970s (a mysterious fate that has befallen too many Victorian piers in seaside towns around the country). The framework of the destroyed edifice sits in the sea as something of an eyesore, though it takes on an impressive character when photographed at sunset.
The still extant Palace Pier.
Brighton Pavilion.
I was last in Brighton with my family for a literally "end-of-the pier" exhibition. My young son had become a fan of the then-only-recently-resuscitated SF TV show Doctor Who and, on the series' return in the early 2000s, a nicely presented exhibition was mounted to promote it. In those days there was a direct train from Watford to Brighton, so it took not much more than an hour to get there. To deliberately coincide with the exhibition, the local Toy Museum had set up a small exhibit of their own that featured merchandise from the 1960s-1970s heyday of the show's earlier incarnation, so the boy was in his element.
Chichester, the County Town of West Sussex and a cathedral city, is the location of an annual festival of dramatic, musical and artistic presentations running for several months of each year. The location of a natural harbour (now both a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), Chichester has a significant history. Fishbourne Palace is the relic of the largest Roman residential building in the UK, while a museum enclosing the remains of a Roman bath is located in the town. An outstanding architectural feature is the Chichester Cross, a finely detailed, covered Gothic marketplace of 16th Century standing in the town centre, while Chichester's cathedral, opening for business in the early 12th Century, is singular for an English cathedral in that it has a campanile standing apart from the church itself. It features a range of Medieval architectural styles.
The stretch of water separating the Isle of Wight from the mainland coast is called the Solent. The island itself provides shelter for the strait, and so protection to ports and harbours on the coast, like Portsmouth and Southampton (from whence RMS Titanic sailed in 1912). The Solent is the location of the Cowes Regatta, an annual sailing event and competition. Cowes is a port on the northernmost extremity of the Isle of Wight, to its east is the seaside town of Ryde, giving rise to the generations-old schoolboy joke: Why don't yachtsmen like horses? Because they prefer Cowes to Ryde. Ba-dum, tish.
Southampton is situated on an estuary where the rivers Test and Itchen meet. On the opposite (western) side of the estuary is the New Forest, proclaimed a Royal Forest by William I (The Conqueror) so that he had somewhere to hunt. His son William Rufus (King William II), described by some as "nasty, brutish and short", was shot dead by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest in August 1100. It's unknown whether it was an accident or done with intent, but his companion at the time was clearly taking no chances, and Walter Tirrel immediately fled for the continent. The New Forest was later an important source of oak timber for the English Navy's ships.
On the southern edge of the forest lies Beaulieu (pronounced "Bewley") and the National Motor Museum, founded in 1952 by the 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu. As an aside, there is a fabulous motor museum at Gaydon, near Warwick in the West Midlands (The British Motor Museum, formerly The Heritage Motor Centre). Twenty years ago, when working with a client in the automotive industry, we had several meetings there and I was never in a rush to return to the office in London, preferring to have a look around the many excellent exhibits. The exterior of the building, however, had the unfortunate look of something devised by Albert Speer. Nearby, by the way, is the British Film Institute's National Archive, "the world's largest archive of film and television".
There's some variety in the character of the East Coast resort towns, though there is usually something of the "lowest common denominator" about any popular seaside holiday destination. There will always be fish and chips, candyfloss (cotton candy) and sticks of rock (hard candy that usually has the name of the resort penetrating the entire length of the confection), risqué comic postcards and kiss-me-quick hats, bunting and decorative lights along the promenade, donkey rides and boating lakes, amusement arcades and maybe a pier (boardwalk). Cheerfully tacky as much of that is, it might have had—depending on its scale in relation to the local environment—a quaint charm in its less aggressive manifestation in the mid-20th Century. However, where these things come to dominate the character of a town, it hardly needs stating, such a place might become far less attractive. As local fortunes fall, and dereliction and neglect accompany the desperate proliferation of meretricious merriment, often becomes unbearable.
Here is a selection of East Coast resorts, from Yorkshire in the north to Suffolk in the south (there are seaside resorts farther south, in Essex and Kent on the East Coast, too, but I have never experienced any of them):
Whitby, in Yorkshire, retains much of its picturesque character as a 19th Century whaling and fishing port, and its harbour is overlooked by the remains of a 13th Century abbey. Latterly a Benedictine house, the original foundation was destroyed by attacking Danes and rebuilt... Only to be later brought to ruin by the Dissolution. The town and abbey are probably most famous for their inclusion in the novel Dracula, a fact that in recent years has filled the town to overflowing with film crews and extravagantly Gothic afficionados of vampiric literature. Whitby is just outside the North Yorkshire Moors National Park and not far from RAF Fylingdales, a starkly futuristic presence on the moor serving as a ballistic missile early warning system.
South of Whitby is Robin Hood's Bay. I have no idea what the connection might be to the legendary outlaw, but the town is small and amongst the most charming of the county's coastal resorts, its winding streets allegedly historically providing cover for smuggling as an adjunct to the official occupation of fishing. Robin Hood's Bay is inside the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.
South again is Scarborough, a large resort held (by its residents) to be one of the most upmarket of Yorkshire's seaside towns. It's overlooked by the impressive remains of its castle, dating from the 12th Century. A medieval royal charter permitted the holding of Scarborough Fair, an event occurring annually for several hundred years and the inspiration for a well-known song.
The fishing village of Filey was thought, in the past, an unspoilt refuge away from the bustle of Scarborough. It then became a popular resort in its own right. While maintaining some dignity in architecture like its Georgian crescent, it is also home to a Butlin's holiday camp. While the profile of such establishments has risen in more recent years (they were often referred to as "Butlitz" in the past—an unkindly but not altogether inaccurate reference to Colditz POW camp), they are still held to be relatively downmarket. Filey's railway station closed in 1984, reducing access and therefore income from tourism, while Brexit will likely further harm its prosperity through damage to its fishing industry.
Bridlington was the largest lobster fishing port in Europe. Brexit will have affected that, too, and not positively. Dear old Brid has known hard times before: William I's vengeful Harrying of the North reduced the annual value of local land from £32 in earlier Saxon times to a paltry eight shillings. Bridlington is very much a "traditional" seaside town with all that appertains, both good and bad. It has—like most resorts—been in decline over several years due to factors including European travel and foreign holidays becoming increasingly accessible from the mid-1960s, and, conversely, industrial decline limiting the leisure activity of less affluent urban populations. A trip to Brid was a treat provided by my secondary school to reward the house which had performed best in any academic year. With little help from me, my house (Kirkman, for anyone taking notes) was the usual beneficiary and we were let off the leash in "mufti/civvies" (out of uniform) to attempt to buy alcohol, eat unhealthy food and indulge in other mildly irresponsible behaviour (including playing bowls, traditionally a pastime for genteel retirees).
Poor Hornsea is falling into the sea at a rate of up to two metres per year. Beyond its propensity to crumble or wash away, I don't know much else about it.
Then comes the Humber Estuary and the Yorks/Lincs border.
Cleethorpes is another large archetypal seaside/holiday resort close by the major industrial fishing port of Grimsby. I'd guess its fortunes are similar to Brid's and for all the same reasons, though possibly magnified. My father worked away from home for a while in the 1970s, centred in Grimsby (but returning to us each weekend), so we sometimes took a train there to visit him and have a day by the sea. It has to be said, though, that Cleethorpes (like Brid) was not the kind of resort that was too much in sympathy with the souls of anyone in our family. Grimsby is the inspiration and title of a song written in the 1970s by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, lyricist Taupin having grown up in Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, a town that inspired their song Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting!
Further south, the wide beaches at Mablethorpe came in useful in the 19th Century for (legitimate) ship breaking. They're useful, now, with their dunes, as a haven for wildlife, particularly communities of grey and common seals, some way north of the town. Unfortunately, the town itself has become a miserably run-down centre of trashy entertainments. Lacking any architecture of note or much evidence of cultural history, Mablethorpe yet possessed—when I was young—a sleepy, unsophisticated, and slightly old-fashioned post-war charm. Yes, there were the expected gaudy amusements at the south end of the town and, sadly, a holiday caravan (trailer) park to the north, but in between it was orderly, well-kept and just busy enough with incredibly wide, uncrowded beaches. Its windswept character was enjoyed by my grandfather when he was in training nearby during WWI, and that was one reason why we were occasional visitors. It also appealed to the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson for similar reasons in his day. He had a cottage there in the 19th Century, and from the beaches he reputedly shouted his verse at the sea.
Incidentally, Tennyson's wife's mother's brother* was John Franklin of the Lincolnshire market town of Spilsby, on the southern edge of the Wolds. Sir John, as he became, is hailed on his monument in the town square as "DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH WEST PASSAGE". That's a bit of a reach, but he made several explorations to the Arctic, his last in 1845 in search of a northwest passage. The expedition became lost, frozen immobile and came to tragedy that might well have included cannibalism. The expedition's two ice-bound ships were abandoned by the explorers in 1848 as they looked for escape. By then, many of the party had already died, including Franklin. The expedition is the subject of Michael Palin's excellent book Erebus, the name of one of the expedition ships.
Mablethorpe extends southward into Sutton-on-Sea and more of the same, but after that the beach narrows and becomes more lonely and stoney. Huttoft, a small community enlarged by a population of retired seaside-ride donkeys, is actually slightly inland but gives its name to a narrow unpopulated beach nearby.
While possessing a charming name, Chapel St Leonards is a rather charmless place, having an air of cheap impermanence. Ingoldmells is next, fading into the full-strength English seaside experience that is Skegness. Skeggy, as it's affectionately known, is famous in Britain from Great Northern Railways' 1908 poster featuring the character of The Jolly Fisherman declaring that "Skegness is so Bracing". Like Mablethorpe, the original town of Skegness was lost to the sea (in the early 16th Century). Some of us think it might have stayed that way to good effect.
There are no further resorts around The Wash until Hunstanton in Norfolk. I know of it only from the broadcast work of the poet John Betjeman. The other principal Norfolk resorts are Cromer and Great Yarmouth, neither of which are personally familiar to me. Yarmouth, unsurprisingly, sits at the mouth of the River Yare and is the accessway to the North Sea from the Norfolk Broads, which I do know. The Broads are wetlands around a system of rivers and lakes. Many people take cruising vacations there on small boats, or simply sail or chug about for the day (presumably all believers in Ratty's dictum from The Wind in the Willows: "[...T]here is Nothing— absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats"). Old windmills, once used in pumping for drainage, are in some evidence thereabouts, and, notably in Norfolk, many Medieval churches have round towers.
The family love of all things Medieval brought us to inland Norfolk a few times (especially to see the county town's Cathedral in Norwich), while friends of my wife and mine who relocated to the county frequently invited us for weekend retreats to their farmhouse in the 1980s. Through them, we also became acquainted with some of Suffolk's coastal resorts.
Lowestoft is the most easterly community in Britain. Again, it's kind of archetypal and being quite industrial, despite blue flag status for its beaches, is not as attractive as other Suffolk resorts.
Southwold is an appealing seaside town with lighthouse and pier. So attractive is it that about half of its housing stock now consists of second (holiday) homes or property otherwise for holiday rental. Southwold can boast one of the most magnificent medieval churches in the county dedicated to St Edmund. As an indicator of local prosperity, the church was completely built in about 60 years, towards the end of the 15th Century. All its medieval stained glass was destroyed, unfortunately, by Puritan iconoclast William "Smasher" Dowsing during the English Civil War. Below Southwold there is an RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) nature reserve. Sadly, to the south of the reserve are the Sizewell atomic generating stations.
Thorpeness is a small community that was turned into a private holiday village by the landowning Ogilvie family in the early 20th Century (think Sir Clough Williams-Ellis' village, Portmeirion, in Wales [used as the setting for the 1960s SpyFi TV series, The Prisoner] but more fantasy English than fantasy Italian).
Particulary attractive is Aldeburgh, a centre of shipbuilding in the 17th Century, now more associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, the singer Peter Pears and the town's namesake festival of Classical music that they instituted in 1948. The main venue for the festival is the nearby Snape Maltings concert hall, but other venues, including the splendid Church of Holy Trinity in Blythburgh (the "Cathedral of the Marshes," and as impressive as St Edmund's in Southwold) are also used. Aldeburgh lies within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and has various buildings of historical interest—particularly a quatrefoil Martello tower, built contemporaneously with other coastal towers as a defence during the Napoleonic Wars. The tower can be rented now as holiday accommodation and its fictional counterpart features in MR James' ghost story A Warning to the Curious, wherein Aldeburgh becomes Seaburgh.
Lastly, there is Felixstowe, which I have never visited but know to be a major container port, which can't do much for its appearance or environment so far as R&R is concerned.
I know almost nothing of any seaside resorts farther south, going into Essex and Kent, except the fact that Southend(-on-Sea), is a large, traditional resort famous for its pier—the longest in the world. So, I can say nothing of Walton-on-the-Naze/Frinton-on-Sea, nor Clacton-on-Sea all in the former county, nor Whitstable, Herne Bay, Margate, Ramsgate and Deal in the latter. After that, we are onto the South Coast and leave the North Sea for the English Channel. Sadly, all I've experienced of Kent is derived from one or two trips to the county town, Canterbury (principally to visit the cathedral, I need hardly add). I have never visited anywhere in Essex apart from travelling through to press passes at a printer in Southend. For all those counties' historical wealth I have unforgivably neglected them (having said that, the burghers of Essex do have a reputation in Britain not dissimilar to that of the good people of Florida in your own country).
If there has been any recent growth around many of the East Coast seaside towns it has sadly been most evident in the unstoppable invasion of caravan parks, which have been spreading like a rash. There has been some continuation of the post-war practice of retirees building homes in Lincolnshire (nearly always bungalows [single-storey houses], presumably to anticipate the retirees' increasing frailty as they grow older), to the extent that colloquial architecture has now almost become a meaningless phrase.
When all's said and done, many of these places have significant and interesting histories. Not everyone is tuned to that, and within reason it would be entirely wrong and selfish to begrudge simple enjoyment to people who seek it. Some manifestations of that have their own aesthetic, as we probably all recognise from trips to the fair, and who doesn't like a stroll down a colourfully lit pier?
* Such a distant relationship—conversationally presented to obtain spurious credit by association—is put down in Yorkshire by the phrase "their cat pissed on our doorstep." In this case, since both ends of the tenuous relationship deserve credit in their own right, I should think it doesn't apply!