Today, myself and four friends decided to see what it would be like to be tourists for the day in Southend. 

All of a certain age, we caught the bus into town – for free. We met in the Royals and then got the pier hill lift down to the seafront. 

We then caught the train – at a very reasonable concessionary fare, to the end of the pier, peeked into the cafe where Jamie and Jimmy did their TV shows and walked up to the lovely cafe and had teas, coffees and biscuits. After a good chat, and commenting that we could have been relaxing on the deck of a cruise ship,  we moved on to the RNLI shop and we all bought some great little gifts.

You can even get postcards and post them with the pier’s unique postmark.  Back on dry land we got the lift back up to the high street and went into Tomassi’s for lunch. We had good food and mock cocktails and more chatting after which we caught the bus home, all agreeing that we had thoroughly enjoyed being “tourists”  in our own town !

WENDY HIGLETT

St  Andrew’s Road, Shoeburyness