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Comment by flarg | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in a nearby English seaside town around the time the photographs were taken and as a child I was taken to the places in the photos by my family. These were once bustling places full of holidaying industrial workers but as the UK's industrial base declined so did these resorts; better service and weather was available overseas for not much more in terms of real cost. My hometown is now a standard English costal town, renovated 50 years too late by private developers to whom the local authorities have sold or leased land at rock bottom prices, a heady mix of drug addicts, tracksuited iPhone Facebook addicts and old dears struggling with their trolley bags. Still a lovely place to be when the weather is fine, but basically, purgatory.

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My childhood holidays were to Blackpool, Morecambe and Southport. Basically the north-west coast. Rhyl and Anglesey were occasional choices too. I loved Anglesey and crossing the Menai bridge, driving through all the tunnels on the way. The joy of having parents split between Lancashire and Cheshire.

That was in the 90s and early 2000s. Morecambe is famous for a load of underpaid cockle pickers drowning when the tide came in, if I remember right. Southport and Blackpool were great when the tide was out, you could literally cross the estuary separating them if you were stupid enough. The beaches weren't always so fun unless you liked strolling through a mass grave of washed up jellyfish. And the tide was a force to be reckoned with when the sea wall along the prom was as tall as a house.

But that was then. All I've heard about Blackpool, for a long time, is that it became a stag/hen party hotspot and otherwise a dump. Southport was more or less a retirement community like Lytham St Anne's.

Shame really, just a part of the country that's been neglected since Thatcher. And you've got the lake district barely an hour's drive away. Such beautiful nature.

My dad grew up in Rhyl, and we used to go on holiday to Anglesey a lot when i was a kid too. It is indeed an amazing part of the world for natural beauty.

But the towns have seen better days. I remember seeing the infamous closed-down shop branded "Rhyl's Biggest Receiver of Stolen Goods":

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gazh1/184659511/

(as the caption says, mouse over to read the notes - the slogan is not what it seems)

My nan lived in Anglesey, so growing up in Tamworth (couldn't get any further away from the coast), our yearly summer hols there were fantastic. I loved it. I remember a beach there, Newborough I think it was. I remember it looking tropical in the summer it was so nice.

I've always lived in Southport and your assessment is more or less true. But as I'm preparing to bring up a kid here, the decent schools, parks, and services are all I'm really looking for in a place to live. There are regeneration schemes under way with various levels of promise: https://standupforsouthport.com/southport-town-deal-5-marine...

The only other thing I'd add, like a commenter below, is that we went walking the other day on the frosty grassland of the beach, under a beaming wintersun, and it was really quite beautiful.

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