If you’re considering a day out of London by the seaside, you might think about going to Southend - or ‘Saafend’ in the local lingo. (I once saw a horse called Saafend on a racing card, and thought for a moment it was an Arab-owned and named horse, till a friend of mine read the name out loud.)
Southend was an attractive Victorian resort once. But much of the centre was destroyed in the 1960s in favour of bright new ‘modern’ architecture. It doesn’t say anything in the town’s favour that one of its major employers is the Inland Revenue.
Famously, the town was the site of weekend and bank holiday battles between mods and rockers in the 1960s. (Other seaside towns saw such battles too, but seem to have put their violent past behind them rather more effectively.)
But Southend can still be a fun place to visit. It has the country’s longest pier, over a mile long, and plenty of amusements and fish and chip shops. Very much a typical, rather déclassé English seaside experience.
There’s the ‘Adventure Island’ theme park - unlike most, free admission means “You only pay if you play”. There’s a Sealife centre.
There’s even a sandy beach (’Three Shells Beach’) popular with families - and Southend has a ‘Blue Flag’ award for clean water.
And all this on the Thames Estuary - not even the North Sea. Does that really count as the seaside? Well, it did as far as most Londoners were concerned, for years and years, till cheap flights to Torremolinos enabled them to make their annual dash for the Med.
How to get there: National rail from either Liverpool Street, or (the faster option) Fenchurch Street station.
Photo credit: James Gardiner on flickr
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