Southwold

Southwold was a good choice. I found it charming, as it still has an air of Victorian elegance lost in so many other English seaside resorts.

I remember seeing beach huts for the first time; I thought having small wooden houses on the beach was weeeird!!!! So I looked into it to see how they came about.

It was Queen Victoria who made sea bathing fashionable with her “hut” on wheels – a sort of bathing machine which afforded privacy for the ladies who could enter the water with only their heads being seen.

Later on, in the Edwardian era and in the years following the First World War, the sight of people of both sexes in bathing costumes had become acceptable. But changing in public was still frowned upon and could result in a fine. So people needed beach huts to change in! Enterprising people made use of the abandoned bathing machines by removing the wheels and turning them into beach huts. Other huts have been made from redundant railway carriages.

I loved the string of brightly coloured beach huts in Southwold! Not sure it’s worth saving up for one; it takes a while when you can only save £15 a time