AS the leaves fall from the trees and the cold autumnal breeze blows, this year's few warm summery days already seem like a distant memory.But with a record-breaking Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival, a trip to Wembley, and high-profile visitors in Southwold, the summer of 2008 will be remembered for years to come.

AS the leaves fall from the trees and the cold autumnal breeze blows, this year's few warm summery days already seem like a distant memory.

But with a record-breaking Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival, a trip to Wembley, and high-profile visitors in Southwold, the summer of 2008 will be remembered for years to come.

This week in Turning Back the Clock we trawl through our photo library to compare this summer's excitement to similar events when everything came in black and white.

In May, a famous corner of London turned blue and white as 15,000 fans travelled to Wembley to cheer on Lowestoft Town Football Club in their FA Vase final against Kirkham & Wesham.

While the result that day wasn't what the large crowd were hoping for, a more modest number witnessed a triumph almost exactly 41 years earlier when the team trounced arch-rivals Great Yarmouth 7-3 in the first leg of the Eastern Counties League Cup final.

In July, the sun shone brightly on the east coast as some of the world's finest flying machines paid a visit to the town. Two days of glorious weather brought a record-breaking crowd of 445,000 people to the seafront to witness a memorable show that included the Tigers Freefall team, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, an Avro Vulcan and the Red Arrows.

The Red Arrows are always a favourite with the crowd and when the team roared over the the Esplanade, in September 1977, it was clear they were just as popular back then.

For the last two years the air show has sat side-by-side with the Honda Formula 4-Stroke championship's visit to the town. This year 60,000 people cheered David Cowley and navigators Chris Jary and Paul Barkshire to a race win and second overall in the Lowestoft Lings 225hp boat Miss Toft 11.

Powerboat racing has always been popular in the town and this photograph from 1978 shows some of the decade's racing craft speeding over the waves in Oulton Broad.

There was more excitement in the area at the end of July when the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, paid a visit to Southwold. And just one week later prime minister Gordon Brown was enjoying a holiday in the town, which included a trip to Lowestoft with his children to the Hollywood Cinema.

It was not the first time such high-profile visitors have been to the region and two photos in this week's Journal show two such memorable moments, including when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Lowestoft in 1956 and when Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester, named the HMAV Ardennes, at Brooke Marine, in 1976.

It was the turn of pirates, Daleks and Star Wars characters to walk the streets of Lowestoft in August as the Friends of Lowestoft Hospital marked 40 years of organising the carnival. In 1979 the Lowestoft Players' impressive three-headed monster won first prize.

Clearly upset to be out of the spotlight during an eventful summer, the bascule bridge hit back in early September when a piece of rubbish caused it to get stuck in an upright position for over half-an-hour.

This photograph from 1970 shows the retractable bridge that was used while the town was waiting for the bascule bridge to be built. Surely no one could have imagined how many column images the new bridge would go on to earn itself.

Finally, how could a round-up of the summer be complete without a mention of those pesky seagulls? The birds dominated The Journal's letters pages for months, but their mischievous nature has caused much debate for years.

A photograph in this week's paper from 1976 shows that they were just as keen to snatch any edible scraps they could get their beaks on 30 years ago.