Category Archives: Travel

Through the Aperture (on The Promenade…) British Seaside – Part 3

September 2, 2013

Margate

In my penultimate instalment of seaside visits I give you Margate, a town which up until a few years ago may have been best summed up by the Morrissey lyric ‘The coastal town that they forgot to close down’. It has been in decline for decades, overlooked next to its experienced swisher sisters in Whitstable & Broadstairs, it has arcades, a dilapidated pleasure beach and not much else to recommend it to the passing train passenger. But with the opening of the Turner gallery in 2010 and a trickling influx of ex-Hackney-hipsters the town is beginning to show signs of a renaissance. There are shoots of gentrification in the form of retro tea rooms, boutiques and over-priced jumble sales. However there is still something very wistful and maudlin about Margate.

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Through the Aperture (on The Promenade…) British Seaside – Part 2

August 26, 2013

Bexhill

Field trip to Modernism by sea:

Bexhill is a lovely seaside town. It has all the usual Georgian & Victorian decay common to Sussex seaside towns complete with net-curtain-twitching-B&B’s, uniform beach huts and murky brown healing waters, but it also has something unexpected – Modernism. Bexhill is home to the De La Warr Pavilion which is the second ever modernist structure built in the UK. And just like famous childhood resident Eddie Izzard the pavilion is surprising, beautiful and unexpected, I give you my second photo diary of English Seaside towns:Read More

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Through the Aperture (on The Promenade…) British Seaside – Part 1

August 19, 2013

Scarborough

There’s nothing I love more than visiting a new English seaside resort and we seem to have notched up quite a few this summer, sigh.  So in the first of a series of photo diaries I give you Scarborough on Yorkshire’s East Coast. It’s a fabulous town, full of beautiful Victorian architecture, both decaying splendor and starkly cared for beauty, there is an authentic British beach that feels like the shore that time forgot, all kiss me quick and bus mans holidays with a particular charm of its own:Read More

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