As summer draws to a close and school children start to look despairingly towards a return to education, Suffolk’s tourist attractions must count up their earnings and reflect on a scorching heatwave.

Some businesses benefitted as thousands of Brits flooded to the East-Anglian seaside towns, others suffered as the high temperatures kept punters behind closed doors.

One attraction that did a roaring trade over August was Easton Farm Park in Woodbridge.

Cara Edwards, the site executive, said: “The heat wave, and the warnings for people to stay in doors definitely caused numbers to decrease but we’ve had quite a few events so we’ve brought the numbers back up with that and we’ve actually managed to beat our numbers from last August already.”

She continued: “On average we’ve had about 200 people come here per day this summer and we are expecting about 400 today.”

The Suffolk Punch Trust also had a similar problem when it came to the scorching temperatures of this summer. The trust’s visitors centre manager Julia Vinson said: “It’s been swings and roundabouts for us this year, when it was very hot we didn’t get that many people through the door because it was simply too hot and people preferred to go to the beach.

“When it was raining no one wanted to come here either but we saw a nice turn out once the temperature started to drop. We are pretty much neck and neck with last year, we have so far had around 11,000 visitors since April and last year we had 12,000 between April and the end of August.”

Things were definitely different on the coast especially Felixstowe which benefitted from the soaring temperatures and heavy investment. The town pier is owned by Stan Threadwell.

He said: “We’ve absolutely seen a positive impact from the heat wave this summer. When you’re a beach resort sunshine is obviously paramount but there has been an upsurge in general with the investments across Felixstowe.

He continued: ““We’re starting to see Felixstowe become more than just a day trip town now people are staying for two or three days because the package of Felixstowe is now generally really great.”