Yahoo News My run-in with a Cornish local as the over-entitled hordes fill their town
The conflicts for tourist destinations such as this, where opportunities are scarce and properties are only affordable to incomers, are self-evident
Stepping from the seclusion of lockdown in Somerset into the explosion of activity that defines Polzeath beach in midsummer was a shock to the system. By the time I’d finished my morning coffee, people were already scattered across the lengthy expanse of the town’s glorious sandy beach. Like Lowry on vacation, in the early-morning light and made blurry by sea spray, stick-like figures were framed in the rectangle of our elevated glass fronted sitting room. Our upside-down rental proved as much a viewing platform as a home, offering a 24-hour vantage on ever changing coastal conditions and the ongoing soap opera that a busy beach provides.
We arrived, after months of pandemic imprisonment, with two disgruntled teenagers into the epicentre of a hormone-fuelled frenzy of teenage socialising. By day, families were living out their British seaside fantasy of fish and chips and surfing. By night, tiny campfires sprang up as teenagers gathered to flirt and frolic under the stars.
Our location was not for the anti-social, although I imagine on a windswept winter's day it would be both peaceful and sublime and made a mental note to return without family andout of season. At the height of the school holidays, it offered a nightly exhibition of an array of hair styles that never ceased to amaze. Mullets and mohicans, long trailing hippy locks, afros and enormous quiffs, were all testament to the long dreary days of lockdown tedium!
Putting on a show for me each morning, meanwhile, were dog walkers and surfers; a daily 8am outdoor yoga class and a more energetic-looking gymnastics class, both organised by the local surf school. After days of spectating, I finally caved and spent a delightfully windswept hour doing sun salutations on the sand. Moving around us were hikers, kayakers, children and adults and a few bleary-eyed teens who I suspect might have spent the night there.
Such rich pickings when it came to humanity came as quite a surprise, considering only weeks earlier the news had been full of threats of pitchfork welcomes from Cornish locals; understandably unhappy about the seasonal influx of tourists with Covid-19 still a real and present danger.
On one balmy evening returning from a dog walk, three teens sat in the car park playing loud music just below our house. I asked them politely to turn it down and one asked politely why he should, since his beach was covered with people he hadn’t invited to his town?
We engaged in a short, civilised discussion, and emerged, I like to think, with a widened understanding of each other’s points of view. He moved his ghetto blaster, I thanked him for his tolerance and suggested that, since his family run a nearby caravan park, he might think of the money and put up with the eight weeks of over-entitled hordes.
Yet in that short chat, the conflicts for tourist destinations such as this, where opportunities are scarce and properties are only affordable to incomers, were self-evident. Perfectly enclosed on one side by the slow ascent of dramatic cliffs toward Pentire Pointand on the other by the slope of the caravan park marking the start of the gentler walktoward the hot spots of Rock and Padstow, it’s no wonder that this sheltered enclave is such a magnet for well-heeled family fun.
The Camerons, long-time visitors, recently bought a house in nearby Daymer Bay, but, unlike Gordon Ramsay, waited for lockdown to end before taking up residence. Such well-known names are just the tip of the second-home iceberg. I wondered how deserted the streets of west London must be as I looked from our rear balcony at all the familiar faces, some disguised by face masks, queuing outside the local Spar. I’m old enough to remember this part of the UK without today’s burgeoning tourist scene and I don’t think my teenage friend would be any happier back in those deserted days, either.
In the spirit of confession, it would be wrong not to flag up the value-added virtues of our chosen holiday home for a control freak like me. I could keep one eye on the teenagers on the beach and flit quickly to the back of the house to look out on the high street and gauge the waiting time for fish and chips, or delicious coffee served in the café across the road. Normally I’d be busying myself trying to be everywhere at once. At Gwel Trelsa, I could put my feet up and direct the action from my large, super comfy blue velvet sofa – extremely conducive to relaxing.
Cornwall never ceases to amaze, and Gwel Trelsa proved a new wonder, a universe removed from the holiday rentals of the 1980s when I first visited, when nylon sheets and a teasmaid were the height of modernism. Here was every luxury imaginable: super-king beds, fluffy towels, power showers, underfloor heating and a kitchen with all mod cons, all just a three-minute sprint from the Atlantic.
I had big plans on arrival, the sort that make teenagers groan. We were to visit the Eden Project, pop down to St Ives and see if we could peer through the fencing and catch a glimpse of the soon to reopen Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, and maybe even take the surfing lesson I’ve been promising myself for years.
Instead, I was so content in my beachside eyrie that I barely stirred from it. The teenagers came and went, renting boards from the surf shop and boogie boarding for thrills, while saving enough energy to renegotiate their curfew on a nightly basis. As for me, dare I say I was content?
If all the world’s a stage, for a week in Polzeath I had a front-row seat. Only a fool would look further afield for thrills.
Gwel Trelsa sleeps 10. From £1,472 for three nights; £6,065 for a week in summer (01208 869090; latitude50.co.uk).
