There are places that never quite leave us.
Not because they were grand. Not because they were perfect. Not even because they lasted. But because, for a brief and shining time, they held a version of us we can never quite return to.
For me, one of those places is Tynemouth Lido.
As a boy growing up in the 1970s, hot summer days on the North East coast often meant one destination. If the weather was kind — and occasionally, miraculously, it was — then the Lido became the centre of the world. There was the shock of cold water, the slap of bare feet on concrete, the echo of voices across the pool, and that particular kind of seaside bravery that came just before a jump.
You were never quite ready.
You jumped anyway.
That was the point.
The Lido was not simply a swimming pool. It was a theatre of summer. A place where children tested themselves against cold water and concrete edges, where families gathered, where towels were spread, where the North Sea wind insisted on joining in whether invited or not.
And for a few hours, in the strange magic of childhood, it felt as if summer might last forever.
Of course, places do not stay still.
By the 1980s, like so many seaside landmarks, the Lido began to fall into disrepair. The crowds thinned. The paint faded. Salt and weather did what salt and weather always do. What had once been full of life became quieter, emptier, easier to pass by without really seeing.
But that is the thing about places like Tynemouth Lido.
They do not simply disappear.
They wait.
They wait in the memories of those who ran along the poolside, who braved the water, who remember the first cold shock and the laughter that followed. They wait in old photographs, family stories and the odd, sudden ache that comes when you see a place you loved standing silent.
My poem The Lido, the opening poem in Spanish City Slickers, came from that feeling.
It is not a documentary poem. It is not a history lesson. It is a poem about standing at the edge of a place that appears empty, and realising it is still full — full of voices, summers, shadows, promises and ordinary moments that somehow became permanent.
The poem imagines the pool as a vessel of memory. Empty, perhaps, to the eye. But not truly empty. Never that. It is filled with every summer it ever held.
That is why the current campaign to restore Tynemouth Lido matters.
Restoration is not just about bricks, railings, concrete and water. It is about recognising that places carry meaning. It is about saying that the seaside of our childhood still has value. It is about refusing to let memory become rubble.
There is something wonderfully stubborn in that.
And very North Eastern.
We know what weather does. We know what time does. We know how easily buildings fade, how quickly the past can be dismissed as old-fashioned, inconvenient or too expensive to save. But we also know that some places are worth fighting for because they are part of the emotional map of a community.
Tynemouth Lido is one of those places.
For those of us who remember it, it is not just a closed pool. It is childhood under a wide sky. It is the smell of salt. It is the echo of laughter. It is the courage of a child standing at the edge, pretending not to be scared.
And perhaps that is why it still speaks.
Not loudly.
Places like that never need to shout.
They only need the right people to listen.
Spanish City Slickers is a book about growing up around Tynemouth, Whitley Bay and Spanish City in the 1970s. It is about the Lido, Arnold Palmer’s crazy golf, the fairground, the arcade inside the Dome, shellfish stalls, long summer holidays, rain-soaked afternoons and the strange geography of childhood.
But it begins with The Lido because the Lido feels like the right place to start.
A place of water.
A place of memory.
A place waiting, still, to breathe again.
Stephen Watson is the co-founder of Shades4Seasons and manages the day to day operations of the store. As a professional copywriter Stephen manages the store's social media marketing and content creation. Stephen has published long-form articles and blogs extensively on LinkedIn on topics ranging from technology to self-improvement and commercial matters. He is also a published author with his collection of poetry "The Milling Street Tales". You can find out more about Shades4Seasons founders here.
