I’ve developed a slovenly habit when visiting some of Scotland’s pre-loved seaside towns. It’s triggered when you pass the first barren space where a local shop had once been. Soon you become mesmerised by these boarded-up husks and fall to counting them.

You imagine what these places might once have looked like. The buildings which housed these shops are still rather grand, of course, for they were built at a time when civic pride stood for something and when men who had been successful in business wanted to bequeath something to their local towns. Then, if you look hard enough you’ll soon encounter the supermarket behemoths (they usually hunt in twos) lurking beyond the town’s main drag, sucking the retail profits that once sustained the old High Streets. In their wake come the scavengers and bottom-feeders: the vaping shops, the tanning salons, the fast food emporiums and the amusement arcades.

In Saltcoats, Sainsbury’s and Lidl lie at either end of the town centre, between them creating a vacuum that slowly picks off the local retailers one by one. I’ve seen this phenomenon all over Scotland and in the north-west and north-east of England when the old industries which had once fed and watered these places moved out.

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Enterprise zones would then be created by national and local governments and talk of future-proofing and sustainable jobs and retraining workforces and ‘resilience’. Often, the enterprise zones merely assisted global corporations to maximise a few low-tax, minimum-wage years of profit before high-tailing it, taking the jobs with them.

Saltcoats lies within North Ayrshire’s ‘Three Towns’ area that also includes Ardrossan and Stevenston. They all sit, side-by-side along the eastern shore of the Firth of Clyde and once teemed with visiting Glaswegians borne there each summer on 45-minute train journeys. I’ve never really caught on with the ‘Three Towns’ schtick, as it seems to denude each of these proud wee settlements of their distinctive characters.

I’d known Saltcoats as a destination for childhood day trips. A few years later, my first teenage romance would proceed hesitantly with a Saltcoats girl.

Saltcoats was also the home of Bobby Lennox, one of Celtic’s legendary Lisbon Lions. Growing up in Glasgow we knew all about Saltcoats for this fact alone. He was the only member of that great team who was born outwith Glasgow and Lanarkshire. His statue sits at the top of the town centre, near the train station and I make a little act of homage to him on behalf of all my deceased relatives who had loved this magical wee footballer.

I’ve come back to Saltcoats because it was recently rated the cheapest place to buy a coastal property in the UK with an average asking price of £114,365. Normally, this might suggest a measure of disrepair, but not here. Saltcoats in the sunshine on Saturday afternoon was looking like a million dollars.

Yes, of course the pedestrianised town centre was looking a bit careworn, but it’s still handsome and inventive. On Saturday it was buzzing. I immediately warmed to the fact that four old pubs still reside here and that as soon as you step off the train you’re right into the heart of the town.

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Even the Bank of Scotland is open for business. Normally, the big banks leave at the first signs of economic turbulence. Like the betting shops and fast food franchises, the banks are permitted to suck these communities dry before leaving as suddenly as thieves in the night to another place still showing signs of life.

In articles such as this one about towns which have encountered significant economic and social challenges you’re tempted lazily to reach for their placing on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. But you then risk defining a neighbourhood by its problems. The heroism and resourcefulness of local people to make their home towns thrive once more get overlooked.

I like the Saltcoats town centre: you could have a brilliant wee night out here. Of course it’s edgy, but if it wasn’t there would be something wrong. To the untrained ear the local accent can be inner-city Glasgow, but there are tilts and dips and the odd vowel shift here and there which separate it from Old High Glaswegian.

In Saltcoats the way this town is refusing to accept defeat would melt your heart. They’ve placed flower baskets in some places and there are a couple of commemorative benches. People actually stop here awhile and actually talk to each other.

Down on the promenade which sweeps around this corner of the coast I meet sisters, Margaret Hodge and Jan Bradley, originally from Glasgow who have settled here.

“Saltcoats is a lovely town,” says Jan. “Look at all the young families playing along the front.” Behind her you can just about make out the mountains of Arran across the water, shimmering in the late summer haze. “It might not be as popular as it once was, like many of the old Ayrshire seaside towns, but since Covid we’ve seen quite a lot of visitors.”

They both point me in the direction of the Eglinton Diner for a fish tea. “You’ll get great fish and chips with bread and butter for about six pounds,” says Jan. Aye right, I’m thinking, but I’m intrigued and head along the prom and up and up a side street.

There are 12 tables in the Eglinton and I get the last empty one. Several families across three generations are seated at the others. What a great wee place and it’s making an effort too. It’s also loud and buzzing but no-one’s acting like a tube.

The service is solid gold too. Friendly, but not overly so and nothing’s too much trouble. It’s got a big smile. It’s “just two wee seconds” here and “just two wee seconds” there. And yes: a fish tea costs £6.80. And at £6.30 it would be a sin not to take a smoked sausage supper home for my tea.

I always like to hoover up all the local papers when I visit these towns. You can divine the health of a place by its weekly gazette and Saltcoats is served by the mighty Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald, still going strong after 170 years. It’s half the price and has twice the content of its three big rivals: the Ayrshire Post, the Kilmarnock Standard and the Irvine Herald.

Today, it brings news of Danny McInnes and his giant spud the startling achievements of the North Ayrshire Opera Company. There’s a report about the death and a serious injury following what the police have called “a disturbance”.

Down by the promenade a project is taking shape which will rejuvenate this place. The outline of the Saltpans bathing space, once the largest tidal bathing pool in Scotland, is still apparent. You’ve seen several of these, all of which have been reclaimed by the sea and you’d always hoped that one day they could be brought back to life. Well, it’s happening in Saltcoats.

After three years of campaigning, a local group called Splash, chaired by the local Labour MP, Irene Campbell have succeeded in proving the feasibility of bringing the pool back to life with detailed engineers reports and the endorsement of a global expert in developing lidos. It would transform the historic Saltcoats Harbour area. Cost estimates are a modest £500,000, which is probably less than UK Labour’s annual clothing bill.