There is a rhythm set down by the sea – by the steady turn of the tides, the passage of the boats, the pull between land and water. But it is there also in the year’s division of pleasure, the stark demarcation of the in and out of season. To the unaccustomed eye there is little so bleak as a seaside town in winter – the shuttered gaiety, the unpeopled shore, the wind that rattles the amusement arcades, ice-cream parlours and bed and breakfast windows.

When the warmer months come, they are heralded not by the hedgerows, snowdrops and songbirds, but by a sense of the town itself unfurling: the reopening of cafes on the front, the softened contours of the sand, by the sea that no longer scowls a hunkered-down grey, but softens, and lifts its face towards the sky. And then comes the arrival of the day trippers, pleasure seekers, holidaymakers, a sudden swelling of numbers for the yearly parade of airshows, funfairs, hen dos, weddings.

Every year the autumn hits with new strangeness. The unexpected silence, the lurch. And then we are returned once more to the emptiness, the quiet streets, the roaring sea. The sense of the town returned once more to its own.



This past year, the Guardian photographer Christopher Thomond captured this turn of the seasons, depicting life along the short stretch between Blackpool’s North and Central piers. It is a portrait of the land itself – of water, sky, blazing sunsets, but also of its people – the swimmers, cartwheelers and selfie takers who crowd this northern shore.



Winter’s pier

In the wintertime there comes the sense of space – the sky spreads wider, and the sands lie largely empty. Sound folds in and out of itself: the whip of dogs wet-footed and unleashed. The wild grasping call of the gulls that cling to the promenade and wheel the high winds, wings wide, eyes sharp as needles. Above, the light shifts: short days, long shadows, heavy cloud, fierce, cold sun. There is a strange new reverence for air, for the buffering of kites and the billowing of coats and the murmurations of starlings that swell and shape. Beauty finds new form: the gaudy buxomness of summer is set aside, colours drain, grow softer, subtler, until the landscape sings a new and slighter song, of pier rust, tide-glint, rock.

I’ve been doing this since I were nine year old and I’m 39 now. I started off with my uncle Norman. I have 18 donkeys altogether but these four I’ve kept up all over winter. Today I came down as soon as the tide went out and I’ll get about an hour until about 5.30 Peter Gallagher, donkey owner

Carla Read’s six-year-old son, Warren, flying a kite just after high tide; a gull with Blackpool Tower in the background.



Spring blossoms

Life returns to the seaside in a flurry of reopenings: the stalls selling postcards, knick-knacks, buckets and spades, the promise of crazy golf, deckchairs, carousels. It is an odd blossoming, in shades of bright plastic and candyfloss pink, and with it the sense that the joviality is rising, determined and potent as sap.



A visitor walks under a pier at low tide in May.



The first visitors arrive, summoned by half term, Easter break, and they take to the sand in windcheaters and bare feet. The days are not heavy yet, they are bracing and new. And the piers stand as improbable as flamingos, stalk-legged in the tide.

A sign on the North Pier; love padlocks attacked to the railings.



We’ve come for a couple of days from the opposite coast, near Whitby. The sand’s better over this side, at least for sandcastle building Dean

Dean Brown constructing a replica Blackpool Tower on the beach.

Summer lovin’

In summer, the sound of the seaside grows voluptuous, soft air filled with bursts of pleasure – laughter, squeals, full-bellied gulls. The chatter of vacationers, whose days stretch long and warm-limbed before them. The days fill out, their hours taken up with sandcastles, fairground rides, love affairs. There are so many people now – all along the front, on the sand, gathered in the arcades, riding donkeys, walking dogs, playing rugby in the sea. They come for a day, they stay for a week, for a time this town becomes theirs. And the sky too gives itself up to the season, full now of airshows, sunsets, the scent of chip fat and doughnuts.

The annual Blackpool airshow; young aviation enthusiasts.



We were going to go to Skegness but we thought no, Blackpool’s the place. We had a bit of a road trip on the way here, there’s loads to do such as the Pleasure Beach. I’d never been in the sea before so I don’t know what to compare it to but it’s been great Tim Swain

Nottingham students play rugby in the sea during a four-day break in Blackpool.



On the beach

There is no great fanfare. The bodies are revealed suddenly, awkwardly, offered up to the summer as a pale gift. The teenagers trying out this year’s bikini, the fathers who stand on the beach bare-chested, displaying their prowess with sandcastles, giant spades, improbable swimming feats.

Donkeys parade on the beach; a tractor skims the sands before breakfast, preparing the beach at low tide for the day’s visitors.



Under the steady eye of lifeguards, children explore this new terrain: of sand in the sandwiches, damp costumes, lotion, the dazzling new array of prizes, a crab in a bucket, a long streak of seaweed curled like a dragon skin, a shell, small and impossible as a fingernail.

There’s sandbanks and incoming tides to watch out for and bye-laws to obey – for example we don’t allow inflatables as, when there’s offshore winds, the last thing we want is someone floating off to Norway Jessica Cunagh, lifeguard

An abandoned Toy Story inflatable ring, Yan Xiao from China.

Lifeguards keep watch over the beach at the start of the school holiday season.



Ropes and safety messages from the beach patrol.



Switched on

Since 1879, Blackpool has held its annual light display as a crowning to the summer months. Running for 66 days and along six miles of the Fylde coast, the event requires more than 1m bulbs, costs close to £2m, and throws the town into a state of bright hysteria. The Illuminations still draw the crowds, the run of lanterns and glitz enlivened these days by illuminated trams, 3D projections on the tower, and a multimedia festival of light. For most, though, it is still a slow trip along the front, faces pressed to car windows, a blur of lights beyond.

Charlie Wen from Malaysia and Lan Yi Qin from China take pictures of themselves, lit by the glow of the illuminations.

Autumn takes hold

A seaside town does not fade into autumn. There is no pastoral descent of leaf-turn and woodsmoke. Instead there is the sudden curtain-drop of off-season, an ending too brutal to be wistful. Still some holidaymakers choose to linger – holding to the last warm days, the abandoned detritus of the summer months: rubber ring, skateboard, bucket, enjoying the oddness of this time, the hours turned mute and aimless.

The sun sets on Bonfire night, the final day of the resort’s famous illuminations and the last day of the season.



Sunlight fades over the Central pier.



RNLI volunteers on their weekly practice session after nightfall.



But now comes the sea mist and the shuttering, the dwindling of footsteps along the front. And the town feels the pull of its own tide, a soft withdrawal from the shore, ebbing inland, lying low, until the spring returns once more.