Blog Takeover: Beside the Sea with Leanne

Hello! I’m Leanne from over at The Dress Diaries and the wonderful Lauren has kindly asked me to post for her whilst she’s away. Unfortunately, I’ve never been to Brighton (it’s on my priority list!) but in keeping with lovely coastal towns, this is the perfect opportunity to share some of the perks of living by the seaside.

Up until I moved to university a few years ago, I was a fully fledged, big city girl. I’d lived in Leeds all my life and being from ‘up North’ carried its many perks including seaside holidays. When I was little, it was almost a certainty that if the family were ever to go on holiday, it would be to somewhere on the east coast. There was nothing more exciting than the prospect of real fish and chips, ice creams every day and of course, 2p machines.

So when it came to deciding where to move to university, the obvious choice was the seaside town of Scarborough.

Best things about living by the sea.

I loved living by the sea for three years and I would love to return for good. Seagulls on a morning are actually quite a welcome alarm clock in comparison to a Nokia ring tone, would you believe?

The picturesque ‘by-the-sea’ scenery. The seaside is just a beautiful place to be and there’s so much to explore. Finding new caves or a bench hidden inside some of the public gardens just doesn’t get old and I should know, I discovered a lot during my time there! Going through my old photographs I just wish I’d taken more pictures but there are just too many adventures to be had.

Great food. Obviously, you won’t find a better portion of fish and chips than you will on the coast. You just can’t understand the beauty of a true chippy tea until it’s in a cafe with mismatching crockery, overlooking the beach, looking out to the rainy weather, with bread and butter and a teapot for one.

And for dessert? This is the place for ice cream in every flavour or my personal favourite, freshly cooked donuts.

It’s a great place to invite people to. In my case, I moved away from my family and friends and started afresh, all by myself. Of course, I missed them all so I invited them to see me and unsurprisingly, nobody says no to a trip to the seaside! In my opinion (and of course, I may be biased…) visiting somewhere like this in comparison to the various city nights out I had whilst visiting my other friends at their universities is so much more fun.

The beach. Even though I lived here as a student, a seaside town is also the perfect family place. Everything from arcades to donkey rides to sea life centres, there’s something for all ages. On a sunny weekend, you can guarantee the beach will be packed to the brim with kids enjoying the sand and the sea.

As it’s now November, this one is pretty apt. I cannot recommend experiencing bonfire night on the beach enough. It is such a lovely night, without the traffic queues to huge firework displays in the middle of a park somewhere like we normally do in cities. We get a sparkler each, the reckless few would buy tons of fireworks and set them off along the shoreline and everyone shares beer and hot chocolate with brandy. Beautiful.

And finally… It’s the only place you can spend pound after pound after pound trying to win a plastic keyring with Harry Styles’ face on it or a Super Mario cuddly toy 😉

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my post and thanks again to Lauren for letting me share a piece of my life with you all! Please make sure to find me on Twitter or Bloglovin if you’d like to keep updated with more of my ramblings. Hope you have a wonderful November 🙂

[Thank you Leanne, you’ve summed up all the things I love about living by the Seaside! Although I don’t eat fish, I prefer a battered sausage with my chips!]