seaside

miss annie

Maldon's nice too and not all that far from Mersea. Takes about 15mins to see the entire place but there are some decent eating places and, like the rest of that part of Essex, good oysters. @David, did you get dragged off to Mersea Island for holidays? Almost everyone I knew at school went on caravan holidays there at least once.

Cookie

@ miss annie, crikey, as a kid I would have considered a week at Mersea the epitome of really posh! Our Sunday School, Elim Church (which was close to Pooles Park school ) used to arrange day trips once a year to 'seaside' resorts'. One year we went to Canvey Island, another year we went to Maldon. This was in the 60's. I do not know whether there are any archive pictures of these places from that time,I must check this out , but these places were not really what you would call 'seaside'. I had been on a day trip to Southend with my parents, so I 'knew about 'seasides'. Hindsite is a wonderful thing, and as I grew up, I realised that for most of the kids at my Sunday School, this was their first taste of anything even remotely like the seaside. I was lucky, at least I got to see Southend.