“Oh, I do like to be besides the seaside” - Sepia Saturday

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt photograph of a happy group, enjoying themselves on the beach c.1920s is the cue for a musical introduction to more happy family photographs.  Click the link below.

"Oh, I do like to be besides the seaside

Oh, I do like to be besides the sea

I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom Prom

Where the big brass band plays "tiddly  om pom pom......"   

On the left, wearing the cloche hat is my husband's Great Aunt Pat, beside her daughter Annette - with unknown friends. Judging by the fashions and the age of Annette,  it  was most likely  taken in the late 1920's  on the beach at Margate in Kent,  where the family lived.

I am a Blackpudlian - born in the famous north west seaside resort of Blackpool, Lancashire,  famed for its golden beaches and its tower, modelled on the Eiffel Tower. Built in 1894, Blackpool Tower  rises to 520 feet - facts drummed into us at school. 

 

 A surprisingly empty Blackpool beach with the Central Pier and the famous Tower in the background.

 

The earliest picture of me enjoying the beach.  I reckon this was taken May-June 1945, as my father here was in uniform.   I know that he had leave between marking VE Day in Germany and then being posted to the Far East. 

Toddling along with my father. 

Our own family holidays were taken in Bournemouth on the south coast of England, with all the ingredients of  traditional 1950's seaside fun  - setting up deckchairs, playing  on the beach, making sandcastles, eating ice-cream,   taking donkey rides, and exploring rock pools. 

 

 With my mother.  Every summer she made me a new sun dress and I remember this one in green and white  polka dots, with shoulder straps on my dress and a bolero to go over it.  

                 

it must be a photographic quirk that Dad appears so sunburnt in the photograph above, because he did not lead a particularly outdoor life to get that brown.  

 

Digging holes with my brother.    You can tell this must be the 1950’s - those were the days before the anti-smoking  campaigns and  my father is happy to enjoy his cigarette, long before he ditched the habit.  Goodness knows why I  was I wearing a hated rubber swimming cap, as I could barely swim at this stage?    I suppose to keep dry my long hair which was  usually in plaits.   

A happy picture of my little brother  looking very natty in his knitted bathing suit and sunhat.

Digging for Australia? 

 Fourteen years on, and I was enjoying a  year working in Boston, Mass - with time for relaxation on Nantucket Island   - this was the life!  

Daughter  (in the middle) enjoying a donkey ride on Blackpool beach. This was taken in Blackpool in the school  October half term holiday, so not exactly summery. c.1980.


Quiet beaches have their appeal too - here Bamburgh beach in Northumberland (a favourite day trip away), dominated by the impressive Bamburgh Castle which can be seen for miles around

 As a child I remember having a book on heroines in history with an illustration of Grace Darling  (1815-1842), the lighthouse keeper's daughter at Bamburgh,   who in 1838 risked storms and icy seas to rescue sailors from the shipwrecked "Forfarshire.   She died of consumption just four years later and is buried in Bamburgh, with a museum dedicated to her life. 

 Across to the east coast of Scotland ad the beach at North Berwick,

20 miles south of Edinburgh - very quiet on a June day.

 A beautiful, peaceful beach to ourselves amidst the wonderful scenery on the Isle of Iona, looking across to the Isle of Mull in the Scottish West Highlands. 


And finally - if you cannot get to the beach, why not enjoy some sandy moments  at home?  Granddaughter having fun in her sand pit. 

 

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