IMAGES: GETTY; ALAMY; CATCH AT THE OLD FISH MARKET


UK


demographic was older, and younger people were a bit embarrassed by a seaside town in Britain. Now they’re discovering that crabbing, then enjoying fi sh and chips on the sea wall, is actually great fun.”


Fresh outlook The cultural element of this renaissance cannot be understated. With artist Tracey Emin — now Dame Tracey — as a fi erce advocate, Margate opened the Turner Contemporary in 2011. To date, it has welcomed nearly 4.5 million visitors. Preserving and belatedly valuing the heritage infrastructure of such towns is also paying off . Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Blackpool Tower and Blackpool Illuminations — all Victorian legacies spruced up with multi-million- pound investments — are a cornerstone of the resort’s latter-day boom, helping Blackpool attract more than 20 million visitors a year. We’re now suffi ciently far into the comeback that


there are younger generations who are entirely unscarred by the grim days of decline. “We have staff working for us and they have no concept of how it was before,” says Alastair Upton, chief executive of Creative Folkestone, an arts regeneration charity that has helped transform the Kent seaside town. “They say, ‘Can you stop going on about what it was like — because it’s not like that now.’” There are too many localised factors — from


setting, to infrastructure, to accessibility — for the pace of regeneration to be uniform across all resorts, points out David. No one would pretend the fortunes of Brighton on the South Coast and New Brighton on the Mersey Estuary mirror one another, for example. But each stands to gain from the changing narrative, he says. A rising tide lifts all boats? Jane certainly thinks


so. “One thing all coastal towns have in common is brilliant people working to put the challenges right,” she says. “I wouldn’t claim to talk for Swanage, or Falmouth, or Scarborough, but what I do know is that by strengthening what we’re doing locally, we strengthen on a national level. We [seaside towns] are all inherently diff erent, but we have a lot of the same challenges — and opportunities.


Clockwise from top left: Hosting the sailing for the 2012 Olympics put Weymouth back on the map; Folkestone Harbour station was once a famous departure point for people travelling to Europe by ferry; The Old Fish Market in Weymouth serves fish fresh from the Dorset coast; Margate has stellar cafes and attractions Previous pages: Weymouth Beach is overlooked by a magnificent Georgian seafront


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