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If you've come to this page expecting to find links to other sites, you'll have to shufty on over to the cunningly-named Other Sites page instead. Not just yet though.
No, The Links, as in Whitley Bay Links, refers to the vast grass-and-dog-poo seaside area that stretches from Watts Slope all the way to the lighthouse approach. Does that road have a proper name? I've checked and it doesn't. There used to be a little parking attendant in a cap, in a hut with pictures torn from Razzle on the walls. And he had the cheek to ask for 10p to park your car. But back to the start...
The Beach (or Whitley Sands) and Promenades
Whitley Bay beach, the suntrap for plump, thonged middle-aged, middle-class women of Whitley Lodge, recumbent behind striped flustering windbreakers, sun lotion and sovereign jewellery, with cat-like eyes, dyed-black perms and bronzed oily backs you could griddle your chops on. Sorry I just had to get that off my chest. Where were we...
Many years ago the main road along the sea front was festooned with ornamental street lamps, at the top of which were little enamel plaques with illustrations of the lighthouse and a civic motto whatever it was ('Sic transit gloria mundi' if they'd had any sense). I have been told that these lamps were once kept lit by methane from the sewers (if that's true, wouldn't now be a good time to bring them back......in fact the pongs from the extractor fans behind certain Whitley Road take-aways would probably do the trick on their own).
Crossing the road at the Rex Hotel (a good idea at the best of times), past an unsmiling octagonal clock and several "North Tyneside In Bloom" tubs of soil and cans, there are all manner of ill-thought-out steps and concrete urinating platforms, some leading to nowhere and some which teeter down to where the beach begins.
At the bottom of the main slope down to the Lower Prom there now seems to be a non-deliberate trickly, thriving moss garden. Here was once a mini-world of bustling shops and cafés; the parents of a friend of mine ran a little well-stocked rock and pop (er, that's confectionery, not records) and swimming gear shop. It's all boarded up now except for the brave Down Under restaurant and a well-kept Lifeguard station. (It reassures to know that, while you and your airbed are being swept out 200 yards at sea, entangled by a giant squid, the lifeguard is sitting painting red blobs on the floor of the watch hut — have a look, it's true.)
Winter of early 1976, helped in no small way by a Photoshopped blue sky. Civic pride not shown.
The Promenade proper begins with the ammonial tang of the Watt’s Slope bogs. In the '70s the Salvation Army ("God's Gestapo") would perform regular 'gigs' here in the open air, just outside the door to the gents (it beats whistling to cover any offending toilet noises I suppose). The Watts Café was then a large, tumbledown yellow hut, with barbed wire to stop kids from climbing onto the roof, yeah right. On the sand nearby were shuggy boats, merry-go-rounds and donkey rides.
Further along from the tatty end of the concrete Prom, the surface suddenly exploded into life with battenburg-like pink and pale yellow paving slabs, all the way to where the money for such things ran out. They are still there in the main, but worn and faded by time and lashings of North Sea and Glaswegian Jesus sandals.
The many sets of steps leading down to the sand were the scene of 'dodging the waves' at high tide; if you dared to run from one set of steps to the next, a big wave would come swooshing in and pin you against the sea wall in your drenched crimplene flares, leaving seaweed in your hair and wet sand up your bum.
Along the beach are several outlet pipes which I think are where various streams and denes reach the sea. They were just big enough to be able to crawl inside but became a bit creepy and dark and smelly the further you went in. Our theory at the time was that when local householders flushed their toilets, this is where it all came out. Yet we would still see how far we could scuttle in, and make dams in the milky water from sand and stones and bits of driftwood.
Just before the main Promenade comes to a ragged slopey conclusion, a humpbacked troll bridge crosses the arcadian dell of Briardene, overlooked by what we used to call the Captain Scarlet flats (Beacon House) and the former BP garage where the guy collected old Land Rovers, a clifftop footpath continues along by the 'pitch-and-putt' golf course, passing a curious little fenced-off 'boat yard' on the shore (in 40 years I've never actually seen anyone working in there; perhaps it tilts up and out pops Thunderbird 2), to the highly picturesque sea wall promenade snaking round to the lighthouse causeway. Shockingly before this sea wall was built, folks would come from all around to dump fridges, mattresses, rubble and the odd Ford Anglia over the edge onto the rocks and sea below!
The Panama Dip and The Folkmoot
This once floral and ornate sunken-gardeny 'ampitheatre' was the stage for many a show of pre-rucksack global harmony. First of all I remember the wonderful marching, droning 'Scotchies' as I called them (I was only three or four at the time). The massed bagpipes and drums were deafening, but I still get a huge thrill from that same sound and will forever tootle over to any man wearing a kilt and shake him firmly by the chanter.
But then there followed the Folkmoot, an astonishing annual week-long gathering of musicians and dancers, from all across Europe to as far away as Russia and the Americas. Scores of beautiful doll-like girls with rouged cheeks, weird togs and pigtails. Lots of whirling, riotous accordian music and stamping of clogged feet. Carpet-wearing piping Peruvians. Carpet-chested fearsome Turks, clashing their long, curved swords. And, though having had their thunder stolen from that last bunch, adding an eerie Wicker Man touch were the hankies and bells of the Morrismen gay from the faraway land of Monkseaton.
I cannot recall when the Folkmoot began, just sometime in the early '70s I think. Boyhood friend Clin and I were press-ganged into selling programmes, which amounted to walking around the masses, shaking a tin at shaking heads unwilling to shell out 10p for two pages of events and fourteen pages of adverts for the Royal Hotel and Featonbys. But the 'Moot grew in size and popularity over several years. Didn't the festival week always kick off with a procession from the town centre? Stirring stuff and all, sadly, long gone. But now the slightest glance of the cocktail-stick mini-flags, piercing the diced Edam of supermarket in-store promotions brings it all back in a cheesey flash.
The council, in what was a gesture of goodwill to all nations I'm sure, would later put an end to the much-loved intercontinental gathering. Never mind, for a current whiff of distant exotic climes, with more hot thrills and smells than is decent, can be seized with an after-the-pubs-shut stagger along Whitley Road at 12.30am for a can of warm Lilt and a kebab.
Some incompetent in a suit decided, at some point, to have the decorative fountain in the Panama Dip removed and the pool filled with a lorryload of soil, rather disrespectfully, and leaving behind the plaque bemoaning the loss of lives in WWII for whom the fountain and pool were put there to commemorate.
No doubt the same municipal tyrant with job-lot of earth was responsible for filling in the sunken Promenade Gardens next to the Cenotaph, and burying-alive the resident fairy-folk in the nearby Rotary Club wishing well (the hatch on the 'safety' grid was often bereft of padlock and so it was open to climb in to trouser any coins — or Scottish pound notes — that had been tossed into the stagnant water). There was a plaque with an inconceivably crap poem on it which went something like this:
"[can't remember this bit]......wishing well
And in it many fairies do dwell,
So make a big splash
As You throw in your cash,
And they may weave for you a good spell."
Champion, that.
The Rendezvous Café
If 1970s Whitley Bay reappeared in the mists like a sort of Brigadoon, this seafront temple of the snackular would look pretty much as it does today. A wondrous place and just the same as ever it was, with its wobbly tables and big arched windows looking out onto the panorama of sand and foam, the "Ren-dez-vowse" (as we called it before school taught us how to speak 'foreign' proper like) is sadly the last remaining of the truly notable buildings that stood along the Promenade.
An unspoilt and spotless nostalgia-fest of frothy espresso, wafers by Tunnocks, and toilets you could eat your dinner off. A place to sit and soothe with a mug of milky tea and a cream horn, admiring the original parquet flooring whilst rubbing the dried sand off your legs with a rolled-up sock.
“Woah! Am goan too see me girlfriend...”
I have this lovely memory from 1975, during that scorching hot summer, of walking back from St Mary's Island along the glistening sunny beach to the sound of waves and laughter, and there was the very beautiful (still is) Tiziana, of the family who own the Rendezvous. She (who was in the year above me at Star of The Sea) was playing in the sea and singing 'Barbados'. A lovely, golden snapshot of that time, though it'll mean sod all to anybody else.
Other Buildings That Stand, or Once Stood,
Along The Promenade
a) The Panama Café was a sort of ramshackle 'L'-shaped wooden yellow and white hut that sold ices, steaming tea and beachballs. It had little round outside tables, each with a central leg made from a chimney pot, and a back door that always appeared to be kicked-in. It's just a tatty eyesore of weeds nowadays, in yet another stroke of council genius.
b) The big, red brick deckchair/windbreaker station, which was probably handed the poisoned chalice and demolished because the steps in the arched doorways stunk of wee, even in Winter, a sure architectural design flaw.
c) That ugly featureless block of the Panama Swimming Club, inhabited by those insane lardsters you see on Look North of a freezing New Years Day, smearing their ugly rolls of white flesh in a protective layer of goose grease before plodging shriekily in amongst the tampax.
“The History book on the shelf, is always
repeating itself.”
d) The 1936 Coronation drinking fountain (if seagull shit is your tipple), now thick with layers of fading paint and droppings. Indeed, like its commemoratees King George VI and Queen Mum, the water function has been late and lamented for many a year. But, though in mournful disrepair, it remains, if only for the cocking of hairy legs.
e) The shelters. They are plural, and were positioned there originally for the use of. Nowadays often railinged-off, they are put to good use by a resourceful council as storage for broken bottles and empty lager cans (this is the cleaned-up version).
f) Those little multi-coloured swivelling bathing huts in which sensible elderly couples would sit on folding chairs and nibble sandwiches of Pek Chop Pork (a tinned pink 'meat' for the dentally impaired), taking swigs from a shared bottle of Barrs orangeade with bits of floating food from passing it back and forth.
The roofs were perfect for running along from end-to-end when the huts were occupied, at which a purple face in a knotted hanky and tank top would appear from below, yelling at the gaggle of unrulies who by this time were just specks on the horizon. Now the rather dangerous surviving concrete bases with rusty swivel tracks still in evidence look like something left over from the Cod War. [Er, I think that should be Cold War — Ed.]
Trawling The Net
In 1978 and again in 1979, two
rusty old fishing trawlers, in
separate incidents whilst being
towed on their final way to be recycled into Austin Allegros,
broke free and ran aground right onto the beach at Whitley Bay.
The first boat aroused our sense
of adventure, what with school holiday repeats of the old
black and white Robinson Crusoe series. So naturally, and with
the TV cameras from Look North rolling, we just had to climb
aboard. Having been gutted beforehand, the vessel was an
empty shell (nothing to pinch in other words) but you could go
down below deck and explore the hold and engine room, deep with
oil and highly dangerous.
One evening on board, as the sky turned a menacing black, the boat began to bob up and down. The
tide had come in, hadn't it, and
we found ourselves literally at
peril on the sea. So all we could
do, as the band kept on playing,
was abandon ship and jump off
into the pitch blackness and three feet of rough, freezing water.
The first trawler was slowly dismantled and bits of it are probably still under the sand.
Didn't notice when the other boat went. That one could've been decked-out into a half-decent
beach nightclub if you ask me.
The Panama Dip?
Another bizarrely-named seaside place-of-interest.
But why Panama? Was it named after the country, the cigars,
the canal, the hat, or the 1984
Van Halen song? Again, where
are all these so-called local historians when you need one.
Just Us Kids #1
One Friday evening in September 1980, like something out of
Weird Comic Tales, two naughty boys with a spade (the digging variety), a roughly-made wooden cross and a milk bottle with some flowers shoved inside, crept down
to the Links next to the Panama
Dip, and turned over some of
the turf to give the impression of
a grave, that someone had just
been buried there.
A grim local constabulary, tipped
off by a zealous council gardener, were soon at the scene in force. Oblivious to the fact that there wasn't the to-be-expected
giveaway mound, digging deep
they found six feet of undisturbed soil. It had all been a prank!
"I suspected black magic," the
gardener told a reporter. Well, hey!
News of the macabre hoax was allowed many a column inch throughout the region's press, the Evening Chronicle leading the
way in style by describing, rather erotically as it turned out, the
mock grave as a "full length
seaside hole". Bless.
Well, the gruesome twosome responsible for such a "sick" (sic) and "grisly" act of vandalism were soon caught, and were up before
The Beak quicker than you could say: "Quick lads, it's the rozzers!"
"Right Burke and Hare..." quipped
the clerk afterwards, as he came
to collect cheques from our
fathers. Best just to keep out of
mischief.
Click this image below to enlarge, it's a scream!
The Motor Show
Now the Flower Show was always
for puffs. You'd have to be a real
toffee-chewer to find pleasure in
standing in a sweaty hot tent,
gawping at some bloke's bulbous
prize tomatoes.
The Motor Show, on the other
hand, was just the horses's knob.
Organised by the Post Office Auto Club, and originally held on Beaconsfield, it moved in 1978 to the Links which was great cos
I lived just round the corner.
For a few years, me and boyhood
friend Clin helped to set out the
stands and put up banners, and so
were allowed in for nowt, and
generally mooched about the TR7s
and Cortina GXLs, collecting
badges and car brochures, and
getting rides in hot rods and Jeeps
and stuff. Did we think we were
lush, hogging the big gun tractors
on the Territorial Army stand.
The Motor Show carried on for a
number of years, becoming bigger
over time with top celebrity
openings and more bells and
whistles since sliced bread. But it
was those few early years that
were king.
The Jewish Cemetery
Here's something to do if you're
holed up in a Feathers caravan
and can't be tooled with another
night banging the fruit machine or
punching the air to 'Rivers of Babylon'.
Like the graveyard scene at the
end of The Good The Bad and The Ugly, nip over the road and see if
you can find the black marble headstone with the deftly chiselled (and no doubt dictated from
deathbed) legend, "He was the paragon of virtue." I'm going to
pinch that myself for my own
stained B&Q seaside bench when
Hell calls my name.
Seaside Benches
Well seeing as you asked, what
is it with those commemorative
benches near the lighthouse,
multiplying quicker than the
Tribbles in Star Trek.
A nice idea but come on. I first
noticed them at the Spanish
Battery in Tynemouth, right beside
Choca's ice cream van (I suppose
the benches offer somewhere to
take a breather after an evening's
dogging in the Prior's Haven car
park). Now there is a line of them
towards St Mary's Island. Give it
a few more months and there'll
be a dralon 3-piece and the seats
from an old Cortina. There will.
Why not plant a commemorative
tree in a nice park instead
(because there aren't any). Or a
memorial wind turbine perhaps,
in a range of bespoke finishes
like when you order a coffin.
The Rendezvous, shutters still
down as staff inside frantically
arrange chocolate snowballs
and slices of yummy lemon
meringue pie onto doylied plates,
to the whirr of buffing parquet.
For a link to some much more
betterer pics of this place of sex
and beauty, why not meander
across to the Other Sites page.
