Never Return

Well I'm just back from a trip round the south west, going to the places I used to go as a kid and I have to say it's been a bit of a dissapointment to be honest. 

The British seaside seems to be having a long drawn out death, well much of it anyway. The first port of call was Bournemouth. It has become really run down, generally grotty and full of people who you don't really want to be sharing a 99 with (that's a Mr. Whippy ice-cream with a flake in it if you're wondering). The move downwards was hit home by spotting a shopping centre, right in the centre of town, which consisted only of a Wilkinsons, a Lidl and a Peacocks. These are not good shops. In fact they are the cheapest and nastiest representation of a department store, supermarket and clothes shop respectively and are quite hard to describe if you don't know them. Take it from me this is not the sign of a healthy local economy. Then there are the pubs. They have all been taken over by the big chains (Brewers Fayre, Wetherspoons etc.) and turned into cloned, fake, crappy restaurants and drinking caverns. No soul, no personality, no individuality. This isn't just a problem at the seaside admittedly, but I looked in vain for an independent place in Bournemouth and ended up eating in a Harry Ramsden chip restaurant (another mighty conglomerate). The whole place was full of groups of people on stag and hens nights, clubbers from the north of England and bogans/chavs (delete as per applicable). In fact this is what really confuses me. The Bournemouth council seems desperate to attract the less lovely tourist to come and drink and party while at the same time trying to be upmarket, by building loads (and loads) of luxury executive apartments and trying to charge seven quid to park your car. They are even converting the old Overstrand building on Boscombe Promenade into "exclusive surf pods". The Overstrand used to be a 50's building on the front with some beach huts and a cafe and toilets. For everyone. What is going on here? Exclusivization in a town that seems to have no money. I can't imagine the Sharon and Kevins paying £50,000 for a beach hut. I would think that the town would do better trying to attract families back. The beach from Boscombe to Bournemouth is truly beautiful, long and sandy and with clean, clear water. Yet on the day I was there it was warm and sunny and deserted. 

The one thing that hasn't changed is the number of pensioners that throng to the coast here. I was staying in a hotel in Eastcliffe and it was like a time-warp. Very friendly and comfortable, but exactly like the hotels I stayed in the last time I was here. In 1981. Flowery wall paper, complete silence and people on half board. That's bed, breakfast and evening meal. Even that was like the 70s, I checked the menu and saw that the starters for the evening meal were prawn cocktail or grapefruit juice.  Twilight zone moment ensued. 

Next it was off to Torquay, much nicer but still more grotty than I remembered. Even the guy who owned the hotel was saying he thought the town had gone downhill and that there was a lot more poverty around. Which made it even more of a surprise to see multi-million pound yachts in the harbour. Apparently in Torquay, and especially Cornwall, there has been tons of money pouring in as people buy property on the coast but no life to follow it as most are absent residents or Russian gangsters, sorry, businessmen. More of that in a minute. At least Torquay had a bit more life and an excellent Indian. It even had a pub or two that didn't belong to Whitbread! The other thing you notice as you head further west is the increasing number of Pasty shops. I thought that by the time I got to Penzance in Cornwall that would be all there was. But luckily no.

Penzance was a relief after the other places, it still feels like a real town, like it could survive even if all the tourists disappeared. It was a joy to behold after the strangeness of Bournemouth and Torquay. The council still knows how to extract money from you though. I went to look at St Michael's Mount and paid £2.75 to park for 10 minutes. It's one of those "all day for so much" deals. Which is great if you plan to spend 8 hours on the beach, but a nightmare if you just want to take some photos. Penzance also finally had some proper pubs. It's always fascinated me how English pubs are so much part of social history. I had a drink in the Dolphin, it's fairly old. Well they used it to recruit sailors to fight the Spanish Armada so I suppose that makes it very old. Before 1588 anyway. And it's still there and still serving the same purpose almost 500 years later. It amazes me, I've said it before but anywhere else in the world places like this would be national treasurers. Here it's just the local and there are about a dozen others of the same period in a mile radius. It's not all roses though. Take St Ives. Actually just avoid St Ives. This is a prime example of a place being loved to death. Obviously it used to be a quaint little fishing village but it's been almost totally bought up by outsiders who use the place as a holiday destination, the Tristans and Grisellas who come down from the City for a nice authentic weekend, in their half million pound 2 bed fisherman's cottage, then bugger off back to London. There are very few locals left (they either sold up and made a profit, who can blame them for that, or can't afford to stay here) but the place is packed with tourists, a branch of the Tate Gallery (which all fishing communities have, obviously) bakeries selling £6 pasties and organic coffee shops and galleries. I think the place was summed up when I heard two men discussing their wives shopping "I wish we could just find a nice wine bar to sit in and meet them later". Wine bar? Sir Francis Drake must be weeping into his bowls shoes.

Still Cornwall was beautiful, I've put some more pictures up so you can see, but it does feel a bit like you are in a foreign country down there. It's full of weird place names with lots of zs, Zennor, Penzance, Marazion, Ludgvan and Gweek to name a few and also saints you've never heard of like St. Ives, St. Buryan or St. Just.

Martyred for putting the jam on their scone before the clotted cream maybe?