Summer's Last Hurrah

Yesterday's weather forecast suggested that the next few days were going to be a return to summer with temperatures heading back towards the high 20 degrees C - maybe even touching 30. After what has felt like a very mediocre summer and what has seemed like an eon of grey days recently it really lifted the spirits that sunshine and warmth appeared to be returning - even if it is only a last hurrah.
Therefore, we decided a last seaside visit of the summer was definitely in order so we set out early for a return to one of our favourite places  - Margate. When we arrived the sun had really broken through, the clouds had departed and the sky was stunningly blue with Margate Sands looking resplendent. 
Once we had parked the car out near the old Lido (after several missteps - not enough change and then the card machine refused to work - aargh!) we headed back into town via an as yet unopened funfair where I took the first two extras - called "Mirror Maze" and "Ghost Train".
It was then a downhill walk towards Turner Contemporary where I captured the third extra "All  Leaders Are Corrupt". This is one of the things I love about Margate - you can encounter so many different sights within such a short distance, including some political graffiti, even before you get anywhere near the seafront!
Today's main image was taken when we eventually arrived at the seafront - it was so great to see whole families out strolling (or promenading as they used to call it back in the day) and enjoying the unexpectedly fabulous conditions.
By this point we were absolutely starving - we had skipped breakfast to get an early start - so we headed to the food outlets at the Sun Deck on the Royal Crescent Promenade. We each had a massive pork roll - pulled pork in a handmade roll with sauce and coleslaw - which was easily enough for breakfast and lunch - very messy and utterly delicious! My next extra was the view from where we were sitting - me eye was caught by the two police officers who wandered into view.
We still had time for a quick pint in a shady spot (the sun was actually getting slightly too strong!), watch a Hare Krishna parade traverse the seafront and a visit to Turner Contemporary.
The centre piece of the current exhibition consists of an art project called "The Disappointed Tourist" by the American-British conceptual artist Ellen Harvey. It explores themes of tourism, ecology and our relationships to images, architecture and place, destruction and loss.
The project started by the artist asking online contributors if there was a place they would have wanted to visit but which is no longer there. This led her to create over 200 paintings, inspired by old postcards, of sites that have disappeared all across the world from baseball stadiums to restaurants, pubs, lidos, funfairs, temples and roadside diners - which have been lost to any number of factors - climate change, redevelopment, urban sprawl, fire, natural disaster or decay. It sounds slightly depressing but it wasn't and it really helped to bring these lost places back to life in a small way. Absolutely fascinating.