WITHERNSEA

Withernsea is populated by mental boy racers and a big ol’ sea, but it’s an interesting place.

A superb, enormous lighthouse bang in the middle of the town on Hull Road is impressive at 127' tall.

I distinctly got the feeling that the entire town was below sea level so I climbed up onto the dyke and I was right, the whole place should be and probably will be swallowed up by the North sea.

But as impressive as the lighthouse and North sea dyke are, the most interesting fact about Withernsea was its battle with Tesco...

...along the main street are loads of stores including Coop, Lidl and Aldi, in place of the previous independent supermarket, Proudfoot.
Proudfoot, although winner of the Best Independent Retailer Award in 2002, was driven out of business by Tesco.
Following the unsuccessful attempt to purchase the Proudfoot Supermarket, Tesco opened a competing store which originally struggled to attract sales. Tesco resorted to a campaign of price flexing, offering customers £8 off for every £20 spent in their Withernsea branch.
This led to an investigation by the Competition Commission.
After their market share increased, Tesco returned their prices to the national average.

Every little helps...