Faded seaside glamour

So to Weston Super Mare for a day by the seaside.

There's an 'early bird' car park in the town and if you get there before 9.30 am you get to park all day for £2.10. This saved us a fair bit of cash before we squandered our savings on the unhealthiest breakfast we could find: Egg and Sausage McMuffins in McDonalds.

And this was where our strange day began.

I cannot deny that I am carrying a few pounds overweight at the moment.  Nothing drastic but with the odd exception, rabbit food is the norm.  But many of our fellow customers were more than a few pounds overweight and some looked as if they might actually live there.

A lot of money has been spent on the seafront and it's a great improvement.   Much of the traffic has been re-routed and it's more designed now for walking than driving.

The ruins of the Tropicana lie in the distance behind the ugly Sea Life Centre (or whatever it's called this year) that juts out into the sea.  We didn't go that far and instead visited the Sand Sculpting exhibition which is surprisingly interesting and not a little inspiring.  It's not cheap to get in but the exhibits are astonishing in their beauty and detail.  Well worth a visit, I thought.  But I have reservations about the rest of the place.

I kept thinking, does anyone actually work down here?  Not everyone can work in the dozens of 'amusement' arcades or chip shops, but there was a steady stream, more like the rapids in places, of people shuffling around going nowhere in particular.

I would guess that many were holidaymakers because some of the accents were Brummie and others were Welsh, but the overwhelming majority I heard were undoubtedly local.

But the town is tired and it's jaded,  Whilst money has been spent on the front, the streets behind tell a different story.  Weston, away from the town, is a bit of Clifton and a lot of Bradley Stoke but beyond the pier it's poor.

The shops are Greggs and McDonalds and there are bookmaker shops everywhere.  Even when the sun is shining, the streets are dull and drab and everywhere you look people are shuffling around with no particular place to go.

And it's hard to ignore the fact that a lot of people are not looking after themselves very well.  You hear the warnings of obesity and unhealthy living and you look around where you live and think that someone is exaggerating.  But there was no exaggeration about today.  And everyone, even the pensioners on their scooters, have tattoos.  Tattoos - today's Philosan.

I don't see too many people smoking these days but almost everyone was in Weston.  

And just when you thought it was grim enough, there were the druggies hanging around on the corners and in the parks, often wafer thin with rotting teeth (no one tells you that bit when you start injecting).  No one seems to notice them because, sadly, they blended in, they are part of the scenery.

I used to visit Weston around 30 years ago.  No one would call it glamorous or upmarket, but then neither am I, but it was functional and sometimes it was even vibrant but today I saw another seaside town on the decline.

I know that a lot of seaside towns are losing their younger people who are moving to the bigger cities for work and better opportunities and it could be that Weston is suffering from the same problem.

It's facilities are largely from another age and, more worryingly, so were so many of its visitors.  There was not a lot of smiling going on.  This was not a happy place.

But what is there to do for the young?  Working in the shops or maybe in the amusement arcades seems about the sum of it.

I suspect the traditional British seaside town is now in terminal decline.

It was nice to visit but I wasn't sorry to leave.

The pier is now fully modernised following the big fire and they even charge you for the privilege of walking on it.  But it's a one-trick pony and an expensive one at that.

I had a nice day but Weston is a joyless town, locked into the past, and clearly run by people who have no vision for the present and on the basis of what I saw today no hope for the future.