The music hall singer was right – being beside the seaside is best

BRITISH music hall songwriter John Glover-Kind and singer Mark Sheridan were clearly onto something when, in 1909, they recorded “I do like to be beside the seaside.” They were expressing – in jaunty verse – a sentiment that was beginning to gain currency in those pre-World War I days, that leisure time – in shockingly short supply for most working people – was particularly well spent if it was at the coast.

Today we have more erudite and thoughtful folk saying pretty much the same thing, in a new report on the benefits to our health and wellbeing of time spent at the seaside. Seaside living has been a dream for many for decades. It is no accident that we tend to gravitate to the coast for a holiday or that those able to afford a second home often want a sea view. Nor is it news that, from Victorian times, taking ‘sea air’ was thought of as good for the physical as well as the mental health.

Many will read today’s report, commissioned by the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs and researched by experts from Exeter University and Plymouth Marine Laboratory and declare they could have come up with the same conclusions from their own experience.

But there is a good reason for carrying out this research, because it underlines – in an era when coastal towns and villages are often run down and suffering economic hardship – that investment in seaside communities and proper care of the marine environment is not only vital for the wildlife that inhabit sea and shore and the landscape itself, but it is also vital for us.

We have discovered many things through the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown we all had to put up with to limit its spread. But one of the most powerful and enduring lessons has been to rediscover the value of what lies on our doorstep.

Those rural and coastal dwellers who were sometimes looked down on by city folk as hicks from the sticks have, many statistics show, fared best during the crisis. And not just because in less populated areas it seems the virus has spread less readily and caused fewer deaths, but also because the impact of lockdown has been less negative. In fact for some, healthy and able to get out and about into the coast and the countryside, it has been a time of renewal.

The pressure now, as we slowly emerge from the crisis – hopefully helped dramatically by a vaccine that ensures we can truly get back to normal – is that we hold onto the best of all we discovered when forced to stick to our own little patch of coast and country.

And that means learning to value it a good deal more than before, take part in beach cleans and other projects that help to maintain it in a pristine manner and keep up the pressure against those that would damage it. The fact that this work was carried out with the full support of government and has earned the endorsement of ministers including Taunton MP Rebecca Pow, at Defra, is significant. There is now, surely, a good chance that the measures called for locally for many years will be given the support they need. Because we all, truly, do like to be beside the seaside