A Christmas Week trip out to the Coast. To the South Gare at Redcar. My old childhood town.

Wild and windy with clear storm damage. This place gets a real battering from the North Sea.

As a child I would either bike here or my Dad would bring me in his old rust bucket Ford. It was a great place to come, it was as exciting as this part of the world got. Huge waves, intrepid fishing boats, working lighthouse and huge supertankers coming into port. If you were really lucky you would get to see newly built mighty Oil Rigs being towed out to the oil fields, hundreds of miles north. That was many years ago.

The waves are still huge, everything else has changed. Hardly any fishing, lots of derelict industry, not so many ships using the ports now. Dad is a distant memory.

The photo below was taken from what was left of one the Gun Posts. Since the 1970s this view would have been dominated by a huge Blast Furnace, Europe’s second biggest. Now that’s gone as well.

Back 18 months ago, the Furnace was still there, a shell waiting to be scrapped. For decades the Furnace dominated Redcar. Dominated its skyline, economy and life. My Dad worked there, my brother in law worked there, most of my school friends went to work there.

Walking there this Christmas and I could really feel THE GHOSTS of the past. A once childhood haunt is now just HAUNTED.