Great Yarmouth: mixing Victorian seaside charm with a renewable outlook

The Norfolk resort, like a ‘half-baked Naples’ for our local writer, has been refreshed and now has its own London Eye-style ferris wheel

If Brexit gave Britain’s seaside towns a momentary pulse, then Covid might have got them back on the dancefloor. These long-dormant resorts have seemingly risen up, like tacky krakens, ready to swallow the entire UK tourist population this summer.

Enter: Great Yarmouth, the once- illustrious fishing port, turned postwar holiday camp heaven, turned post-Brexit hi-de-hell-hole. Full disclosure – this is not the first time I’ve been to GY, as the cool kids call it. I grew up down the road in the now semi-gentrified Gorleston-on-Sea, a town made famous by its patron saint, Danny Boyle. His bootleg 2019 Beatles film Yesterday put our premier beach on the big screen.