Nervous about getting from the sand to the sea without compromising your modesty? Well then, you'd have to use the technology of the day: meet the Bathing Machine. Horse-drawn and all the rage in the 1800s, they could be hired in slots of, say, half an hour, and looked like beach huts on wheels. Queen Victoria had her own personal version on the Isle of Wight. You would jump into your bathing machine at the top of the beach, change into your bathing costume in privacy and then be conveyed down to the sea by your trusty steed, where the front door would be opened and you would step directly into the shallows.
Originally, sea bathing was segregated, with ladies and gentlemen occupying different parts of the beach lest - gasp - ladies should be seen by men in less than their normal head-to-toe coverings. By the end of the century, however, mixed bathing was becoming the norm. Striped changing tents began to appear on beaches from where discreetly costumed men and women would walk across the sand and down to the sea. The Bathing Machines fell out of favour, lost their wheels and their horses, and became the beach huts that we see around the world today - and, gorgeously, on St James Beach in Cape Town.
In The Girl from Simon's Bay, Ella Horrocks, daughter of the hero of the book, takes the train to Simon's Town to search for Louise Ahrendts, her father's long-lost love.
Neat villages clung to the seashore above the railway line.
The train chugged past tiny crescents of sand lined with bright beach huts...
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