Everyone likes going to seaside town for days out or holidays; it’s part of the traditional British holiday experience. No doubt since ancient times, when there were leisured classes who could choose to live where they wanted rather than by circumstance or necessity, villas would have been built overlooking the sea. Certainly the idea of going to the seaside and sea bathing goes back three centuries to when it became fashionable, following the King’s example.
Visitors to any seaside town have certain expectations and hopes; they hope for lovely weather, or at least fine weather, and they expect a beach,maybe with donkeys, maybe a pier, entertainments, shops selling knickknacks and rock and ice cream, maybe arcades to waste their money, hotels, bed and breakfasts, cafés, restaurants, teashops and coffee houses.
People who live in a seaside town have the same hopes and expectations that any town resident may have, decent housing, decent facilities and utilities, employment, transport, shops and businesses, restaurants, and so on…. So this may seem as if a seaside town is much the same as any town, except it major industry is tourism. Well, no. Seaside towns are different. because the nature of much employment is seasonal, and not all of it can be fulfilled by young people in their school or college holidays, families who live here might find full-time year round employment difficult to find. The businesses which rely on tourists and visitors such as bed and breakfasts and guest houses, have to fill their empty rooms, and often the only way they can do that out of season is to offer accommodation to councils who need house their homeless families… councils from far away, London for example, or Birmingham. Some of these families and homeless individuals have other problems and difficulties which is sad indeed, but their problems and difficulties then become the problems and difficulties of the seaside town where they now live. Some of the big old hotels and guest houses from a hundred years ago have been converted into hostels for people with dependency and mental health issues… people from other authorities…
So it may seem that a seaside town has extra challenges, and different challenges from other places; so for the people who live her all the year round it is sometimes a little disheartening to find that we have more than the normal share of people who need support.
It is great, therefore, when things happen in a town which boost its image, draw in visitors, not holiday makers necessarily, but visitors. We live in a village just outside the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare which has drawn visitors to its sandy beaches since the mid 1700’s. Such a wonderful event is the annual sand sculpture exhibition in the summer, the Weston carnival in November, but also over the last few years here has been a food festival! It was on over last weekend and it was wonderful! Look at what as on offer:
It was marvellous, quantities of quality products, friendly and helpful producers, traditionally made food and drink of every sort imaginable… Brilliant! I bought 5 litres of Greek olive oil, two different sorts of cheese, Japanese curry, olives… and i could have bought so much more!!
Have a look what else there was, and perhaps think about coming next year:
http://westonsuperfoodfestival.co.uk/
See our town at its best!
Lois Elsden 