The sands of time and seaside trips
Nostalgia Editor IT looks like we’ve finally seen the last of that long, dark winter with its ‘Beast from the East’, and all the rest of it.
Happily, the light nights are back, and we’ve even had a few glimpses of the sun.
All of which means we can start planning trips to the seaside once again.
Here in the North East we have some of the finest coastline in Britain.
Golden sands, azure seas, and dramatic cliffs - we’ve got the lot.
From Bamburgh in the north of our region to Saltburn in the south, folk have been heading to the coast for generations.
The traditional seaside experience is woven into our national consciousness.
Ice cream, sticks of rock, donkey rides, sand castles, fish and chips, Punch and Judy shows, saucy postcards and dingy B&Bs evoke popular images most of us will recognise.
It was in Victorian times when our ancestors first ventured down to the coast for recreation and fresh air.
The 1871 Bank Holidays Act saw workplaces close down on chosen days and thousands began taking to the newfangled railway network to travel to the seaside.
Whitley Bay, Tynemouth and South Shields became popular coastal destinations as trains trundled down newly-built rail lines that followed the North and South banks of the Tyne.
Meanwhile, the coming of the railway to Saltburn in 1861 established the town as a seaside resort and Victorian Teessiders flocked there to take the waters.
Working class folk might head out on day trips from factory towns. Wealthier people might go for a week in the summer, staying in hotels or guest houses, and creating a Front: Holidaymakers on Tynemouth beach in August, 1980 booming new leisure industry.
To attract visitors, some towns, like Redcar, built piers stretching out into the North Sea, while funfairs sprung up in the likes of South Shields.
Not that our forebears believed in the practise of skinny-dipping.
In the straightlaced days of the early 20th century when a glance of naughty bits would have caused outrage, well-off people paid to get changed in wooden huts called bathing machines which were dragged into the sea by a horse.
Poorer folk, as we can see in some of the older pictures here, would usually swelter fully-clothed on the beach and maybe roll up their trousers for a paddle. Not many people could swim back then apparently!
Enjoy our selection of North East seaside pictures, from the Sunday Sun archives dating from Victorian times to the 1970s.