On the first day we walked to Ramsgate, on the second to Margate. The only thing I knew about Margate beforehand was that the Trotters went there for a "beano"! I’ve got to say it’s an interesting place. A guy in an ice cream parlour told us it’s unrecognisable compared to 15 years ago, when it was apparently a complete dump. To be honest, it still looks a bit like a scene from Mad Max to me, although just a couple of miles down the coast you’ll find some amazingly swish properties.

Nice pictures, mind you, makes Kent look almost attractive (not pictured: the masses and masses of new housing you'd have passed along the Thanet Way and elsewhere). Ah, just realised, I suspect you went by train instead - you'd have had an entirely different perspective that way, not one of grinding drudgery on the choked roads. 

As for Margate, it *is* a dump even if a few arty folks from London have set up shop. Can't see the attraction myself, if you fancy living in a deprived seaside town Sheerness is much cheaper (and closer to London too!) 😂

Nice pics

Being a "Bromley Boy" the annual trip down to Bromley South Station to catch the train to Westgate-On-Sea was pretty much a recurring theme from the age of about 8 to 13 for me

On the later trips after I was about 10 my mum and dad would go to the local in Margate and give my younger brother and I a shilling each in pennies to go and spend in Dreamland on the slots while they were gone - not sure that would be a good idea these days

We are talking years 1956 to 1961 here - I don't remember it being too much of a dump that long ago  

No, we drove there and saw the awfully soulless new housing developments you mentioned. They really are the pits. I know we've discussed this before, but compared to what I've seen in France there are definitely lessons to be learned. Margate isn’t for me either!

Oh! to be beside the seaside! Ramsgate 1897 , my great-grandparents and family in particular my grandmother then aged 7 bottom left.

Today's hotties might think on how you dressed for a seaside outing in the 1890s and shudder😮😮

How do planning officers actually allow past their desks, places like these? And the councillors who approve them. It doesn't have to be like this as you say.

We used to have the tenements and similar but never learnt the lessons of soulless places. Poundbury lost its way which is near me. No gardens...

But none of this has anything to do with "Beanos. These were coach trips from East London or East of London to Southend or Margate. It only applied to them. I've been on a few in the 60's and 70's and it was a proper working class piss up. I remember one with the football club that started from our local at 11.00 am after a couple of pints. Then crates of beer on the coach, pub crawl along the arcades then visit the Kursal or Dreamland more beer or crash out on the beach in the afternoon then on to the discos in the evening before getting picked up at 11.00pm by the coach. I think I could only manage 14 pints in the day but others managed 20. By then you had either thrown up or pulled".

That was a proper beano - I like to think I have become more sophisticated over the years but some may disagree 😂

Perhaps the jellied eels and whelks had something to do with the first. God help the second if you tried the first.

I remember back in the 90s waiting for the school bus and, bored, we all looked in the bin. There was a take-away carton of jellied eels which someone had dumped (can't blame them) and it made most of us feel queasy - disgusting food, and the "jelly" is, as I understand it, made when the eels are cooked, the fluids from them congeal. 🤮

Incidentally I'm a fan of the Beano comic (having read it avidly in the 80s and having avoided managing to lose my substantial childhood collection - I listened when my mum said she'd throw them all out unless I tidied my room). It's named after the same word, beano, in the sense of having a party or a good time (to reuse the quote which appears everywhere). 

European Eels are quite rare (on the Red List) nowadays. Instead of the usual market flooded with Chinese tat (not all is tat of course) we've more or less wiped out our elver and hence eel populations by exporting them in elver form to the so called Far East. Hopefully common sense has prevailed. I was one of the 55,000 people who signed that petition.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/28/export-of-endangered-eels-to-russia-ends-after-uk-government-ban 

Kaliningrad was merely a stopover place on the way to eel farms in China et al.

😂

Broadstairs holds a lot of happy memories for me…the annual Sunday School Trip…this was in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s…believe it or not but British rail ran a special train from London on a Saturday in June, stopping at Denmark Hill, Crofton Park, Catford (where we got on) Shortlands, Bromley South, and then all the way down to Broadstairs…picking up children and teachers..I have great childhood Broadstairs memories of sandcastles, rock pools, donkey rides, candy floss and much more along with a visit to a special tea in a tea-shop with links to  Charles Dickens…

No doubt if I went back now, it might be rather different🤣🤣