We have a packed day ahead, but something glittering catches my eye on the far south of Blackpool’s promenade. Magpie-like, I set out against the wind, my family reluctantly in tow.
“We’re really close,” I say, 15 minutes later, trying to ignore my 10-year-old’s glare. We pass an eight-metre-tall swivelling wind shelter, disguised as a whale’s tail. Striking concrete arches frame a pale, wide horizon. And then we’re there: face to face with the world’s largest mirror ball. Its 47,000 tiles cast fragments of sea, sky and sun back at us in flashes. By now even my daughter is grinning.
JB Priestley called Blackpool “the great, roaring, spangled beast”. Spend a little time here, and it’s easy to understand why. In the 1750s, this stretch of Lancashire coastline was dotted with a handful of houses. By the time Priestley arrived in 1933 to research English Journey, Blackpool thronged with millions of visitors, drawn by its unapologetic reputation for affordable spectacle and non-stop fun.
Blackpool offers the UK ‘s most affordable holiday destination (Photo: Eric Latham/Getty)
I’ve been coming here since I was about a year old – as a child in the 1980s, it certainly wowed me. I loved the days out that ended with hands sticky from rock and eyes unable to stay open on the drive home. Then, like a lot of people, we slowly stopped coming. Our holidays moved abroad.
