The Golden Mile

The Golden Mile is the spine of Great Yarmouth's seafront — a kilometre of amusement arcades, ice cream stalls, chip shops, bingo halls, and family attractions that represents the British seaside holiday in its most unreconstructed form. It is tacky, loud, and extremely cheerful, and it has been doing exactly what it does now for more than a century.

You do not come here for the architecture or the cuisine. You come because there is something genuinely alive about a place that has stubbornly resisted gentrification and continues to deliver its particular kind of happiness to the people who want it. The dodgems at the Pleasure Beach are good. The chips are excellent. The sea is right there.

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A story
The Golden Mile earned its name not from gold but from the money it generated — at the peak of the British seaside holiday era in the 1950s and 60s, the amusement arcades and attractions along this stretch turned over extraordinary sums during the summer months. The decline of the package holiday hit it hard, but it has refused to modernise itself out of existence.

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