Margate Beats Mallorca as Britons Grapple With Confusing Covid Rules

The English town of Morecambe, a hodgepodge of fish-and-chips shops, burger joints, and penny arcades lining a beachfront promenade, is far past its peak. On a summer Sunday in the 1950s, as many as 100,000 visitors from Manchester, Bradford, and beyond might have flocked to Europe’s largest outdoor swimming pool, the Miss Great Britain beauty pageant, and two wooden piers stretching out into the Irish Sea.

But the pool and pageant are long gone, the West End Pier succumbed to a vicious 1977 storm, and 14 years later the Central Pier—once dubbed the “Taj Mahal of the North”—was destroyed by fire. In recent decades, even 10,000 visitors was considered a roaring success as Britons have increasingly jetted off to sunny Mediterranean locales.