Folkestone

British seaside towns feel different in winter, as if it's okay that all the ice-cream shops are boarded up and the crazy golf courses are faded and litter-strewn. In the summer, it just feels sad.

In Folkestone, I bought fake leather trousers and artificial pot plants from charity shops in the high street before descending to the beach. As a child, my favourite shop was the joke shop, which is now closed, like most of the other shops on the cobbled street down to the harbour. There are signs around the town that mention regeneration and of creative quarters, so perhaps it will regain popularity.

My childhood memories of Folkestone are mostly from playgroup coach trips: of the smell of the stalls on the way to the beach selling pots of fresh seafood, of building sand-castles and rivers, of sitting underneath the arches and drying off from paddling in the sea, of eating sandwiches that were always a bit sandy, of finding pretty shells on the beach.. the usual kind of things that you might do as a child, when the beaches were crowded and full of brightly coloured swimming costumes, wind-breaks and buckets and spades.

On the beach in Folkestone last week, I walked through a number of the arches. Most of the arches were dotted with litter and some with graffiti, and looked somehow sinister and decayed, and not quite like I remember as a child. The beach was empty apart from a few people walking a dog, and a child on a bicycle. I couldn't see the sun itself as it set behind the other side of the harbour, but the beach glistened orange and the waves began to look mostly unreal, and that was what made Folkestone beautiful on that day - the sun and the sea.