Spring is upon us and we can hopefully look forward to the return of some normality in our lives as the days grow warmer and summer finally approaches.
How about a few sun-kissed trips to the seaside?
Our main picture shows Whitley Bay packed with visitors at a time of pre-World War I innocence in 1909.
The popular King Edward VII was on the throne, and Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the Liberal Prime Minister.
It was a year when Newcastle United were crowned league champions for the third time in less than a decade (imagine that!).
But there was bad news too. At Stanley, in County Durham, 168 men and boys were killed in an appalling pit disaster.
Whitley Bay was just one of the locations on the North East enjoying the benefits of burgeoning tourism and day-tripping.
The opening of the town's first railway station less than 30 years earlier had made it easily accessible to folk in Newcastle and from around industrial Tyneside.
And indeed the following year, 1910, would see the opening of a new improved station (the site of the current Metro station), as well as the arrival of the Spanish City pleasure park.
Whitley Bay was going places.
It’s a fair bet cucumber sandwiches and pots of tea were on the menu at the Panama House Cafe.
The cafe was owned and developed in 1895 by a former diver on the Panama Canal.
There are also claims that the central part of the building came from a wrecked vessel called the Panama.
Whatever the origin of the name, the cafe did include many nautical features.
Unfortunately, it burned down in 1945 and was replaced by a smaller version which survived until the 1990s.
One wonders what the Edwardian diners would have made of the skateboarders and BMX bikers who use the site today?
- Images from the book Whitley Bay and Seaton Sluice Through Time, by Ken Hutchinson. Amberley Publishing.
Don't miss our new Memory Lane local history website that's packed with archive photographs and has an easy-to-use picture colourisation tool.
