I Love Blackpool
Blackpool is sometimes described as being world-famous. That may be true within the worlds of ballroom dancing, rollercoaster enthusiasm and tram nerds, but my experience is that anyone from outside the UK needs an explanation when you mention Blackpool. Nobody from the UK needs that explanation, with Blackpool week firmly in the Strictly Come Dancing calendar and the silhouette of a metal lattice tower more likely identified as "Blackpool" than "Paris".
Blackpool is a long way from London. Given I grew up not that far away, it still feels seems a local resort to me but even had the train from Euston not meandered through Birmingham and Wolverhampton on its way north, it's still a hefty old journey from where I live now. Three hours after we set pulled out of the platform, we took the turn off the mainline at Preston and headed for the coast. When I caught my first glimpse of the tower from the window of the train, I couldn't help the skip of excitement inside. I snapped off a photo as soon as I stepped off the train.
I posted it online immediately with the caption "Hello Blackpool!"
Given that my hotel was only ten minutes' walk from the station, it felt fair that I could wheel my suitcase the whole way. Although the Tower was already lit for the evening, the daylight was still fading, and so the silhouette was black with just faint traces of green down the edges. The shops through the town centre were closed or closing as, just beyond, the seafront was coming to light. As a kid, knew the town itself.
Blackpool was the prom and the prom was Blackpool. The town centre could've been anywhere.
The hotel was one of many set in a row of terraced houses. Every house in the road was now a hotel, some shiny with lit neon signs and others looking rundown and tired. Each had a sign in the window hanging crookedly on string pronouncing the lack of vacancies. Do people really arrive in Blackpool without a booking and walk the streets looking for a hotel with vacancies anyway?
I headed out for a wander on my first evening to walk the seafront with my camera. I walked across the huge wedge-shaped Central Car Park which runs behind the amusement arcades marking out the footprint of Blackpool's largest railway station, now long since gone. In daylight when the carpark is empty, the platforms emerge still, the gaps between them filled in to create the flat surface of the carpark. They curve towards where the station building once stood - now the site of Coral Island with its plastic parrots and blaring noise.
In the morning I was woken by the sound of running water. At first, I thought it was coming from the shower in the next room but then realised it was too loud for that and must be coming from the shower in my room. Only after a couple of bleary-eyed, confusing minutes did I realise rain was beating against the window. By the time I'd made it out of the hotel, the rain had stopped, but the pavement remained littered with puddles.
I took a walk along the promenade wrapping my hands around the hot chocolate from Starbucks - my only option since their coffee machine was too broken to make decaff. Denuded of the twinkling lights the seafront was grey and cold. Cars travelling at normal speed along a normal road heading to normal destinations. This wasn't the Blackpool that I love and seeing the seafront this way felt wrong. This isn't the Blackpool I wanted to - or felt I should - be seeing.
Coral Island is the largest of all the arcades. Large enough for multiple restaurants, a ghost train and a meandering monorail high above all the machines. On the previous night I'd cut through on a late night walk to fulfil my ambition to see the moment when the lights get turned off. Even then, at 11pm, Coral Island was too full to walk through without many "excuses-me"s and a few gentle nudges through the crowd - children wide-eyed and wired as they feed 2p pieces into loud, shiny machines; parents bleary-eyed and frazzled from a whole day of dealing with excited and overwhelmed children.
I can still easily spend too much time and money playing on the machines with an most ineffectual claw stuffed with teddy bears; I've never had a trip to Blackpool without coming home with at least one fluffy toy I'd rescued. These machines are still there, hardly changed, but the fruit machines with the spinning reels are getting rarer. A few old models remain with broken bulbs in the display and a maximum payout of a fiver. The big money gambling machines are locked away behind a turnstile and signs to keep the kids out - reserved for those who want the Las Vegas experience of pumping a week's salary into a machine in the hope of turning it into ten days.
I remember one of the arcades used to have a cafe at the back sat on a slightly raised platform with a wooden fence running around. My Mum would sit there drinking her10p cups of coffee whilst I dash around the arcade looking for the most exciting fruit machine I could find. I often won more than I put in, but paid it all in ransom for a teddy bear.
On this trip I went into an arcade which seemed like the all the others and spotted a sign for the toilets upstairs. Away from the noise and the thrill of the ground floor, the silence of the empty first floor hit me. This was the arcade which used to have the cheap cafe in it. The first floor still carried the long-forgotten red and gold paintwork the arcade used to carry throughout. The old Blackpool is still there, buried beneath a new coat of paint.
With Central station long-since interred underneath Coral Island, Blackpool North is now the main station. Arriving by train was exciting; leaving by train was always a sad affair. The station is set a short walk back from the glowing lights of the tower and the North Pier. As evening fell, we'd turn away from the lights and walk through the most ordinary of town centre streets to the station, leaving the excitement behind. The remainder of the original Blackpool tram system up and down the promenade had lost its tracks to the station, so walking was the only way back to the station to take the train home.
A couple of years ago tracks made their way up Talbot road again, continuing right up to the doors of the Wilko store standing on the site of the original Blackpool North station. Since then, the Wilko store has gone and the new Blackpool North tram stop is emerging. The new trams which turned Blackpool Tramway into a system looking like any other will soon be making the their from the seafront again, delivering people straight from their train into the madness of the promenade.
These modern trams aren't the ones I remember though. Now a regular fifteen-minute service running up and down the line, I remember the seafront full of the dinging noise as the large double-decker trams left the stops. In my mind I see queues of trams at each stop. Trams of different shapes and sizes, as each new type of stock introduced to the line took its place amongst the others, the history of Blackpool's Tramway rolling past every evening.
Ten years or so ago, the tramway system was refreshed and almost all of the old trams made their way to the scrapheap. At least one of each type was kept in the heritage fleet and you can still see the occasional older tram pottering up and down, calling at their own Heritage stops rather than getting in the way of the modern, orderly service. The heritage trams emerge each day from their home in Rigby Road depot to take their place amongst the shiny new fleet, interlopers on track they once ruled.
Seeing a tram emerge from the depot and come down the side street onto the main tracks at Manchester Square was a rare treat in my childhood. Rarer still was to see one come down onto the main drag at Foxhall Square. My early fascination with the layout of railway and tram systems hasn't gone anywhere, and so on this visit, I walked up to Rigby Road to see one of the old trams emerge before running up to the North Pier to jump on board later that afternoon. The track at Foxhall square is now ten years gone, the only reminder of that route is the truncated points in the main track and the rails buried in the road away from the front, the overhead wires going but the poles to support them standing empty at the side of the road. I never did get to see a tram coming that way.
The northern terminus for the regular tram service is Fleetwood. I'd seen the name on the front of trams for as long as I'd been able to read but never taken a tram all that way. After seeing it emerge from the depot, I jumped onto an old double decker tram - number 700 - to make the trip to Fleetwood. Sitting behind the driver, the ding of the bell and the whirr of the motor as it tried to climb up shallow hills took me right back to those days when we'd take our special tram ride and cram into a busy tram with steamed up windows, trying to see through the fogged glass to find our stop.
Once out of the Blackpool I know, the tram system became like any other - separated from the road and the pedestrians and whizzing past residential streets and small rows of shops all the way to Fleetwood. The turnaround loop at Fleetwood kept the old tram for forty minutes of out the way whilst we wandered around. In truth, Fleetwood holds not much other than a tiny amusement arcade, a quaint gift shop and an ice cream parlour selling delicious Nutella 99s.
Amongst all of the trams, the shining stars are the illuminated trams. The final throes of a rather odd tradition of covering trams in lights to make them take on a different shape in the dark, I remember the various shapes as a kid. The Western Train creates such an illusion as it goes past that it's a real work of art. I saw it peeking out from behind the others at the depot when I stood outside, and would see it again later that evening leading the annual parade of illuminated trams past the Central Pier and Tower. It was followed by the frigate and the trawler and a marching band of drummers covered in colour-changing lights. Missing from the parade, though, was the rocket tram. This was my favourite as a kid and although back in the possession of the heritage collection in Blackpool the sloped interior makes meeting modern regulations hard and for now the depot doors are sealed with red tape.
Walking up Blackpool seafront, it felt the same as it always had done. The Tower dominates the skyline, making the start of a golden mile of attractions and hotels all the way to the Pleasure Beach. I'm sure there used to be a concrete footbridge across the road and tram tracks when I was a kid, but that's not there anymore and try as I might, neither scars on the buildings nor my patchy memory could help me find where it was. I seem to recall it was near a large bargain-basement style shop I used to like spending my winning from the fruit machines in on the way back to the station. The shop is also gone, but it may be where the Sports Direct and Poundland share a familiar-looking concrete building. but the truth is that all of the arcade buildings look the same underneath their plastic façade.
No such hardship locating the three piers, though. North Pier is the most traditional and despite having an amusement arcade at the entrance to the pier, once you get past the noise you can see the old glass-house construction leading you down onto a quiet, peaceful pier. This is a naked pier, lit only by traditional lanterns built into the side fences, leading down to a single building at the end of the pier. The other two piers have been covered in so many buildings and rides that when standing on them, it's hard to discern being on a pier at all. Central Pier is covered in many rides rescued from Southport after the demise of the funfair there and the South Pier marks itself out for those with a taste for adrenaline; it's the place to go if you want to be flung in the air by a giant rubber band or be jolted about so heavily on a ride that you begin to wonder just how strongly the Victorians built their piers.
Just opposite the South Pier is the Pleasure Beach. As a kid I used to enjoy wandering in to see the entwined rollercoasters fly above my head and ride the gentler rides, although I once went on the Revolution Rollercoaster. It's a single loop that you ride forwards then backwards and then get off. It sounds simple, but was the first rollercoaster in Europe have a complete loop! That's the only time I've been on any kind of rollercoaster other than those little ones in the shape of caterpillars and dragons.
Rollercoasters really aren't my thing, and so it's disappointing that the only way in now is to buy a ticket which includes the rides. My days of wandering around the park are over, it seems.
The Pleasure Beach is built on a much smaller site than other parks with a similar number of rides and so the rides intertwine to make best use of the space. Rollercoasters loop through each other's structure and fly around carousels and food kiosks. The Alice in Wonderland ride that I adored as a kid used to emerge inside its building into a cafe and trundle over the heads of those having a spot of lunch; below, the river caves ride also sailed along the side of the same cafe.
Walking back from the Pleasure Beach to the Tower, you will pass Madame Tussauds waxworks, which I remember as Louis Tussauds. I used to be told a story that it was created by her son, hence the different name, but I'm not sure now whether that's true or not. It had a reputation for having distinctly second-rate waxwork models. These days, it's within the fold of the main brand and judging from the video screen outside, appears to mostly be set up to allow you to take selfies with just-about-recognisable carved figures of famous people. Some of whom I'm already too old to identify. Can anyone tell me what "KSI" is or why Korean boybands are all the rage?
There's an aquarium, too. It's another mega-branded Sea-Life occupying a large blue box with pictures of giant fish on the outside. There used to be an aquarium inside the Tower building. Nowadays, there are several separate attractions inside the building but I remember there being many areas inside that you could explore freely once you were in. I remember the aquarium with the tanks set into walls made to look like caves and I remember a science-themed area , where I got to see my first ever plasma ball. Placing my hands on the globe and seeing lightning reaching for my finger tips was magical. I guess I could pretend I know how they work now I'm much older but in truth, I still don't understand them.
The main attraction, though, was the ride to the summit. It seems to be the law that every lookout across a town these days needs to be called the "something-Eye", but the change of name hasn't changed the fundamental experience. Two lifts run up a central shaft and take you to the enclosed space at the top where you can look out of the windows at the town below, or look out through the glass floor. If you've a head for heights and enough balance to get up a spiral staircase you can go up another couple of levels where the sides are encased in netting - not windows - letting the wind whistle through. I went up in the dark on this visit , which I hadn't known was previously possible. From a vertical distance, in the dark, Blackpool is very pretty.
From the top of the tower, you can see the illuminations snake along for miles. Driving through the lights was the traditional way to end a day out in Blackpool. If we'd travelled by train, then we'd likely only see the lights along the Central Promenade, but those times when we were in a car, we'd wind the windows down, open the sunroof if we had one and slowly crawl with thousands of other cars for miles up the coast.
Although impressive in scale, the lights themselves aren't much when seen close up. RGB rainbows flickering across the street, cartoon-ish images of showgirls painted onto the outside of glowing plastic boxes and - for some reason - light-up images of Sooty and Sweep hanging over the road menacingly. Not much has changed since I was a kid in the lights, other than my sense of what's impressive.
After the excitement of the main promenade, the lights take a turn for the boring. There's a roundabout a short distance out of town by which point the lights aren't much more than just some bulbs strung across the road. There's a spitfire on the roundabout which has some searchlights besides it and provides a brief interlude from the boredom. This was the part where attention turned to how slowly the traffic was moving.
One family trip to Blackpool, just before entering the lights at Starr Gate, the petrol warning pinged into life on the dashboard of the rented minibus. Coupled with one of my cousins announcing that he needed a wee five minutes into the traffic jam, at least it gave us something to worry about when the lights got boring.
Persevering through the dull bits gets you to the tableaux at the end. These are huge scenes either made from lights which animate, cartoon style, or fully-built 3D scenes, lit brilliantly. I remember my excitement when some Daleks appeared there one year in my childhood, and I was pleased to see Daleks still there in 2022. Updated to bronze, of course, but still larger and more cartoonish than the real things.
At the end of the lights there's a somewhat creepy scene of large teddy bears playing on swings and a roundabout and then it's over. It's something of an anti-climax that the lights just stop and normal life returns, dumping you somewhere called Bispham, to find your way home.
And so, it's hard to describe Blackpool.
It's the best and it's the worst of the British seaside. It is trashy and brash and glorious and magical.
I also know that two days is about my limit before the noise gets too much and I've spent all my money trying to win a fluffy lion from a grabber machine on the South Pier.
Blackpool has changed in the forty years I've known it, but it hasn't changed as much as the world around it.
And there's still so much I've not done. I've never ridden The Big One. I've never had my fortune told by of the many fortune tellers all claiming to be "the original" along the seafront. I've never been in the sea and I've never ridden a donkey. I know nothing of Blackpool's night life, famous clubs or outrageous drag queens.
My Blackpool is the one where trams trundle past during the day when I'm walking along with a hotdog I bought on the pier and where the Western Train tram trundles past in the evening whilst I'm eating another hotdog. My Blackpool is the one with the twinkling lights and the faint smell of chips.
Blackpool knows what it is, and stands proud and unashamed. Blackpool knows no shame, and nor should it.
If only we could all be a little more "Blackpool"