- Location: Pier Approach, Bournemouth, BH2 5AA
- Opening times: Monday to Sunday, 9.00am – 11.00pm
- Entry: A pier toll is in place between April and October and cost £1.65 per adult and £1.35 per child in 2024. Entry is free November to March.
- Access: Parking in town, charge may apply.
Bournemouth in the first weekend of January 2025 is surprisingly busy. Not busy as I imagine it would be during the summer months, and not busy like it was in its late Victorian / early 20th century heyday, but certainly not the ghost town I was imagining in the fallow post-festive period. There is a lively buzz in our hotel bar each evening, and free tables are few and far between at the peak breakfast times. And despite the high winds, the frequent heavy drizzle, and the dull interchangeable grey of sky and sea, Bournemouth Pier is still the town’s prime attraction.
The pleasure pier is an enduring symbol of the English seaside holiday. Piers had existed previously to allow for the disembarkment of passengers and unloading of goods from boats, but the arrival of railways and steamships in the early 19th century heralded the rise of mass tourism to seaside resorts around Britain, and the once simple shore-bound promenade was soon festooned with restaurant, pubs, shops, theatres, bandstands, and amusement arcades. In short, they grew from mere arrival points into towering entertainment complexes.
The first of this new breed of piers, Ryde Pier in the Isle of Wight, opened in 1814 and a hundred years later over 100 piers jutted out from the British coastline. Bournemouth got its first pier in 1856, but it was little more than a wooden jetty and was replaced by a grander T-shaped pier, also wooden, within five years. Fifteen years later it too was demolished, a victim of storms and shipworm. The iron pier of today was opened in 1880, although having undergone so many subsequent extensions and alterations it is doubtful designer Eugenius Birch – pier engineer without peer – would recognise it now.
My family went on a couple of holidays to the south of England in the early seventies, including a trip to Bournemouth in 1974, a time when every pier had a theatre, even if No Sex Please, We’re British appeared to be the only show in town. Such extravagances were beyond the family budget then, but I have a sudden hankering for an end-of-the-pier show now, if there is anything on at this time of year. There’s not, not least because a handy History of Bournemouth Pier information board tells me that declining numbers led to the Pier Theatre’s closure in 2013, to be replaced the following year by the RockReef indoor activity centre.
This, the board informs me, includes “25 climbing walls, an aerial obstacle course, Pier Cave, Vertical Slide, Leap of Faith jumping challenge and a café on the top floor”. Annie and I open the doors on what must be the busiest point in Bournemouth. The joint is positively jumping, which suggests RockReef is a hit with tourists and locals alike.
A stroll further along reveals that stage entertainment lives on in the Key West Bar & Grill. Alas, there are no There’s a Girl in My Soup-type farces or “Baby, get down to the Summertime City, come on down to the Summertime Sound” Seaside Specials on offer, just the inevitable slew of tribute acts (Abba, Take That, Ed Sheeran, etc.). Not my cup of tea, but if it keeps the venue open it can only be a good thing. The one production that does catch my eye is Queen of the Ocean, an immersive theatre and three-course dining experience based on the last hours of the Titanic. As a self-confessed Titanorak, I check that out if I were around in April.
Along with RockReef another 2014 addition was PierZip, the world’s first pier-to-shore zip wire. With the wind as strong as it is today, I confidently predict that this activity will be closed and am almost instantly contradicted by two fleeting figures whooshing through the air toward shore. We hang around for a bit in the hope we can photograph some other hardy souls in action, but hardy souls prove to be thin on the ground.
Ultimately, the pier’s greatest pleasure isn’t the theatre or the zipline but the simple promenade, the wander above the waves, out as far as one can go to gaze first where sky and sea meet and then back at the town, admiring the sands as they stretch away seemingly for miles on either side. Bracing in any weather, I’m sure, but if my brain harboured any cobwebs today, they are not so much blown away as vaporised.
East and west views of the pier.
Left: One would expect to see a bucket-and-spade shop on an English pier, but it is howling a gale so I think this guy might be being a tad optimistic. Right. The claw! Attempt to win Mike or Sully in this classic amusement arcade game.
Destination or Diversion?
This depends on what one visits Bournemouth Pier to do. If taking in a show or making use of the facilities at RockReef, then it could be classed, but Annie and I merely walk out to the end of the pier and back again, which is no more than a diversion.
