The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Felixstowe, Suffolk*

Felixstowe, Suffolk Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• The Routemaster for it's high quality sixties architecture.
• Not really a building, but that concrete tube in Coronation Park, how many people snogged in there, and then how many people pee-ed in there?
• South Beach Mansion. Built 1865. Empress of Germany stayed there in 1891. Long before my time! Recently renovated. Too many Victorian/ Edwardian buildings demolished courtesy district authority.
• No more favourite buildings left! They've already been demolished! Why did they knock down the Pier Pavilion, The Cavendish Hotel, the beautiful fruit and veg. shop in Hamilton Road with huge engraved windows, and of course the best of them all the railway station - with that beautiful massive engraved window on the front of The Withing Hour!
• Must be the old Fisons building or Cliff House.
• Languard Fort
• Cordy's Alexandra Restaurant where I spent formative years in the early 80s as a waiter.
• The library - it's the dogs bollocks

Demolish It Now Building

• Safeway carpark cos its only ever half full and theres room for a skatepark
• Orwell Green, Cavendish Park, Deben and Orwell High Schools. Oh yes, the triangle, making sure Tesco's goes with it.
• The toilets in the town centre where you can watch the men while they pee
• The whole of Cavendish Park
• Felixstowe
• Deben High school the pier
• The whole of Cavendish Park. It looks like Legoland.
• The Pier
• The Trimley water tower - before they turn it into a border checkpost/watchtower.

The Best Things

• Skatepark hopefully built by summer 2001
• Felixstowe, Full of, generally, harmless nutters. You can always go out and meet loads of people that you know..
• The decent, law-abiding locals, both of them.
• The TV Workshop, The A14, The duck pond at Station road Trimley where you can feed bread to ducks, chickens, and peacocks.
• The sea, and the road out (goes all the way the Coventry whoopee!)
• Sea, promenade, martello towers, Felixstowe Ferry hamlet, swimming pool (Leisure Centre), Hamilton Road, the Town Hall, The Grove (woodland), most local pubs and cafes, sailing boats, Spa Pavilion cafe, beach huts, Felixsowe is not as bad as has been painted.
• THE BEST THING ABOUT FELIXSTOWE IS THE EX SERVICEMEN. TO KNOW THAT YOU LIVE IN A TOWN WITH THESE PEOPLE IS A GOOD COMFORT TO THE PEOPLE WHO LOOKED AFTER YOU DURING THE WAR YEARS.PLEASE BE KIND TO THE OLDIES AS THEY HELPED YOU TO BE SAFE FROM THINGS LIKE ??? WELL YOUNG ONES I WILL LEAVE IT TO YOU TO THINK ABOUT C.M.
• What I remember from 12-20 years ago. The sea air, The mainland european tourists and their lack of clothes, Langer park (and its little hidey-holes), Languard Fort, Beer, Fine Fare, Saturday morning pictures, Detention, Felixstowe FC, The Pier Pavilion (Jackie Pallo's wrestling), Losing my virginity, Beer, Brandon, Andy, Lawrence, Vanessa, Anna-lisa, Shonee, Nadine, Max, Stephen, Nick, Dennis, Georgina, Susan, Tracy, Rachel, Julia, Wade, Adam, Dena, Tim, Deben High, The Grove, Spa Gardens, Beer, Truant, Coronation Park. Football, and the Sea, sorry if i've missed anything (Mark E - see noticeboard)
• The prom, the boating lake, the iccle train, the bouncy castle, my gran's house, the cliff gardens where you can play hide and seek, the late victorian buildings (ah, happy childhood memories!)
• The amount of world travelling I had to do to find somewhere worse to live (the search ended at Barabise in Nepal, 10km from the Chinese border - but it was a close run thing). My favourite view of Felixstowe is always the one I see in my rear view mirror.
• Long beaches (not surprising for a coastal town), good water sports particularly sailing, windsurfing, jetskis etc. No surf though. Is often the sunniest place in Britain.
  No decent shops in Felixstowe but Ipswich (nearby) is better one half decent record shop (IANS RECORDS), even if you can't find what you're looking for, he's a dead friendly chap who likes to spend all day talking so go in.
  I can't really recommend the place for a long holiday, but if you want a weekend by the sea, sitting in a bar watching the world go by then you can do a lot worse than this place.
• The best thing is Landguard Common, a great place to have a walk on a summer's evening, watching the rabbits scurrying about, with the gentle hum of the docks in the background...
• The weather, which you don't miss until you move away. Also the fantastic Youth Group at Maidstone Road Baptist Church, and the minister NicK Swanson (the coolest guy you could ever meet!)

The Worst Things

• The hundreds of bloody day trippers and sunday market shoppers who come and block up the town. If Felixstowe is as bad as everyone says. . . . STAY THE HELL AWAY AND LEAVE US RESIDENTS IN PEACE. ps PULL DOWN THE PIER!
• No skatepark
• Everybody seems to know who you are, what you are dooing, and what you are going to do next.
• Garry boy's kill them all, scum ,escort, alloy weals, lowered, soaped up round in circles. get a life. One road in one road out, a bit like the twylight zone.
• Seems the bandwagon for the Threadwell Family Benevolent Fund still has its wheels on but only just. They are still convinced that the majority of people care about the state of their crumbling Pier. They have obviouslt been taking lessons from the Labour Party Spin Doctors on how to flog a dead horse. In the immortal words of the boys from Monty Python The parrot is Deceased. STOP WATING OUR TIME AND TRYING OUR PATIENCE GET THE MESSAGE WE DONT WANT YOUR STUPID BLOODY SEADOME. If the family fortune is looking in jeopardy could be an idea to do us all a favour and leave. I here Majorca's good most times of the year.
• There only a few skaters in the Safeway part of Felixstowe and there all my mates.
• Mindless thugs, vandals, yobbos, gazzers, shazzers, wasters, drug-addicts, to name but a few but a few.
• the dirty sea, the smell of the yeast factory
• Everybody knows you - how?
• The 'Armpit of Suffolk' harsh but fair.The Felixstowe Pier Trust or Threadwell Family and hangers on Benevolent Fund, how bloody ridiculous!!!! The Threadwells bought the pier and have made a tidy fortune from the residants and visitors over the last 3 decades and more, now decide that having inflicted on the general populace obnoxious offspring and whinging about the cost of maintaing the damn thing that the Taxpayers and Lottery players should fund an unwanted redevelopment that will make them more money. Why should we have to read in the local press at least once a month that they cannot get the funding and think it is a sad reflection on us? GET THE MESSAGE BRING IN THE BULLDOZERS AND DEMOLISH THE WHOLE BLOODY BUILDING!!!! Whilst I'm on my soapbox its intolerable that the young and young at heart have to put up with those waiting to die constantly whinging about those of us who like to enjoy ourselves doing so. IF THEY DON"T LIKE IT THEY SHOULD GO AND WAIT TO DIE ELSEWHERE!!!!!
• night clubs and vandals.
• the nightlife, the things for teenagers to do!
• Everything else - Mark E
• The bomber jacket clan that have descended on Felixstowe and turned it into a bloody London suburb on the seafront, which is what i try to escape from when i leave the london suburb i live in.
• You have to cross hundreds of miles of the Suffolk Outback to reach civilisation.
• Nobody can spell it. Once a mechanic in Colchester spelt my address with a "Chimly" (ie St Martin...)

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

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Credits

Last updated: 2006-12-22