Ian McMillan, writing in The i Paper about visiting his mother-in-law in her holiday caravan, thinks we all need “a Cleethorpes of the mind.” The Cleethorpes of my mind came at the end of a ride on top of the 3A bus that wound through council estates into town. At Riby Square we left the docks behind and followed the long stretch of Cleethorpes Road that became Grimsby Road when we left Grimsby and crossed into Cleethorpes.

Coming to Blundell Park, the home of football and the graveyard of dreams for many a Mariners fan, the road seemed wider as we passed by houses with gardens and hotels with large car parks. Then the road twisted up Isaacs Hill and at the top we caught first sight of the pier, the coal blackened beach and the ale brown sea.

We did not mind the hippety-hoppity, tippety-toeing over the band of coal dust and broken sea shells that separated the beach from the sea. And when the tide was out we crossed it anyway to marvel at wind formed ridges on the hard wet sand which we thought were made by the waves. We poked amongst the worm casts but never found a lug worm. There were blackened, twisted mats of bladderwrack. We used to pop it between our fingers. Sometimes we would find unbroken shells. Razor shells were especially treasured. Barnacles studded the groynes that guarded against the sea’s attempts to seize our sand and carry it down the coast to Mablethorpe.

Once at low tide we walked out forever with my uncle to reach the sea, somewhere near Denmark. We never reached the sea. But we did find more jellyfish than I had ever seen before. They gave me nightmares. In my dream they were chasing after me on jellyfish legs and I hid in my gran’s outside toilet which just happened to be there. I should have dreamed of her coal house instead, because the jelly fish crept in through a gap under the toilet door.

The sand got everywhere. Digging down to the soft stuff that would build our castle we had to penetrate the dry surface that the wind whipped into our eyes and into the meat paste sandwiches my mum had made. We crunched through the sand on our ice creams and drank our pop through a sandy crust on the rim of a plastic cup.

We always took our buckets and spades. The seafront shops sold fishing nets but there was nothing to catch on Cleethorpes beach. Apart from the jellyfish and the gulls that ate the crusts from our sandwiches the only other living creatures we saw were the donkeys we used to ride. And, despite the fact that as I recall, there were always North Sea winds and clouds and me shivering in my sloppy joe, we still got sunburnt and had to be lathered with calamine lotion when we got home.

Down from the pier and the shops and the noisy arcades were the outdoor pool, a concrete hell with freezing water, and gentler pursuits – the paddling pool and the boating lake. Beyond were the dunes and the Fitties, where posh folk [like Ian’s mother-in-law?] stayed in a caravan for a week instead of coming for the day on charabanc or a rail excursion from South Yorkshire.

We weren’t posh. But we were the lucky ones who could take a tuppenny bus ride on a 3A bus and visit Cleethorpes any day we liked. And if you didn’t have tuppence it was not too far to walk.