AFTER many years of decline, the Sussex seaside is making a triumphant comeback.

Last weekend proved the point. Thousands if not millions of people packed the main resorts and traders, after a rotten virus-induced spring, could hardly believe their luck. It was just like the old days but with more prosperity about.

The seaside reached its peak during the 1930s around the time that paid holidays were introduced. Most people came by train and queues for the return journeys in Brighton sometimes stretched all the way from the station to the King and Queen pub in Marlborough Place.

Many people also booked hotels or boarding houses and stayed in resorts for a fortnight by the sea. Entrepreneurs like Billy Butlin saw that more could be made from these trends and he started his celebrated chain of holiday camps. One of the last to be opened was at Bognor in the 1960s as a slightly more upmarket version of the original camps and it remains a going concern. But earlier Butlin had opened his luxurious looking Grand Ocean Hotel in Saltdean which enjoyed four decades of prosperity before being afflicted by seaside decline and converted into flats.

The Second World War put a stop to seaside holidays but there was a revival in the 1940s which lasted for another 20 years. Just to give an idea of how popular resorts were, Volk’s Railway in Brighton carried more than a million passengers every year while the West Pier admitted two million paying visitors. Several million people paid pennies to use the loos, many of them women as male urinals were free.

Most holidaymakers did not swim from the beach and serious swimmers tended to use the swimming pools such as Black Rock, Rottingdean and Saltdean. They were built partly as swanky places where fashion conscious visitors could display their assets. A secondary reason was to keep swimmers away from the Portobello sewage outfall at Telscombe Cliffs which discharged untreated waste just 200 yards out to sea.

Resorts that invested wisely did well. Hastings, whose borough engineer was dubbed the Concrete King, built underground car parks, a swimming pool and a theatre. Eastbourne targeted its superior hotels at the rich and elderly. Bexhill, Seaford and Bognor were smaller carbon copies.

When British holidaymakers discovered Spain in the 1960s, the golden era for British resorts abruptly ended. The forward- thinking resorts such as Brighton invested in the conference trade which provided a year-round business plus plenty of publicity.

Brighton also led the way in making its history attractive which blended well with the new enthusiasm for short breaks at off-peak dates. The tatty old boarding houses mostly transformed themselves into boutique hotels often with surprising inventiveness.

Now the seafront itself is undergoing a welcome transformation. Tatty plastic windbreaks are out, replaced by stylish canvas versions and by colourful tents. Beach huts, once used mainly for changing rooms, are increasingly becoming social centres for friends and relations.

In the sea there are scores of paddle boards and they can be inflated in a matter of minutes. They replace ugly and outmoded plastic dinghies.

People complain about litter but it is quickly and efficiently removed by hard working crews.

Cyclists for the most part keep to the lanes although in Brighton there is unresolved debate over exactly where there should be. Although trains are still popular as a means of reaching the coast, cars are the main way of doing so and it is hard to avoid the jams. Glorious swathes of sand in the far east of Sussex at Camber become seriously overcrowded on fine days. Perhaps the authorities there need to look at the other end of the county in West Wittering where problems over parking have been eased by an efficiently run booking system.

There has been a marked improvement in places to eat and drink on the coast with the Government’s meal deal offer in August making lunches financially attractive. Even the weather is playing its part in making the beaches popular this year. It was so hot at the weekend that there was nowhere else to go. And provided you missed the seriously overcrowded places such as Brighton between the piers, it was still possible to find spots to settle which were not too busy.

Some seaside resorts are still down at heel and need major investment if they are ever to flourish again. Yet they are in the right place, not too far from London, and have the best climate in the country. Many have beauty and magnificent countryside.