Costly crab and crabby staff as tourists descend

HOW quaint that people used to send postcards home from their holidays saying ‘Wish you were here!’. Now it’s a case of ‘Wish you could afford to be here’.

At least it’s like that in Cornwall – and I write these words with meaning from west of the Tamar where I’ve just paid £15 for a sandwich.

Okay, so it was that Cornish icon, a crab sandwich – but one thousand five hundred pence does seem a lot for two slices of bread, five limp rocket leaves, six posh crisps and three teaspoonfuls of what is now known as Newlyn caviar.

Someone just told me that in Rock you’ll pay £16.50 for the same thing, which would prompt me to ask if it did indeed include the eggs of beluga sturgeon.

Don’t get me wrong. I know Wes Country tourism has had a bad time of things and that businesses close to the brink need to recoup as best they can. And I know the wider picture portrays a perfect storm.

A master villain in a Bond plot couldn’t have invented a more damaging recipe…

Take one pandemic, add several lockdowns and make it impossible for anyone to leave the country, then open up domestic tourism so citizens can take a much-needed break. Stir in a popular and beautiful destination and watch it come to the boil as millions flock to its beaches. Add piquancy by throwing in Brexit which means that loads of hospitality industry workers have gone home to places like Eastern Europe.

Now taste the dish towards the end of this record-breaking year and check the seasoning. Too hot? That will be the pepperiness of exhausted staff wondering why there are still people filling tourism hotspots well into October.

“They keep on coming!” I heard one frazzled chef wail this week as a waiter passed him more table orders at quarter past nine at night. “Where the **** are they all coming from?”

“Exmoor,” I muttered. Because I was one of the people making up the hordes after avoiding lovely Cornwall for months in a bid to escape the crowds – only to find they are still here in vast numbers as autumn mists descend.

And who can blame tourism providers for making hay while the sun ceases to shine? As I say, they’ve lost income to make up for, and it may never be this good again.

Which is the very crux of what I want to say here – because it won’t ever be this good again if they take to fleecing the tourists while staff are overworked, weary and bad tempered in a ‘go home and leave us in peace’ kind of way.

It is all so very understandable, but that doesn’t stop the picture I paint from being the truth. Cheap flights to cheap destinations with guaranteed sun are just around the corner – and that is what beckons if you’ve just paid 20 quid for a plate of something containing ingredients which you know cost less than £1.20 to buy – served by a person who is so utterly exhausted you only have to look in her direction to make her snap.

That is what I paid for a crab (there can’t be many crabs left in Cornwall) salad in Mousehole. I wouldn’t have minded had this been a good crab salad, but it most definitely was not. For example, I know for a fact that the only Cornish thing about the three tiny ‘Cornish potatoes’ was that they had been purchased from a Cornish supermarket.

And all this on a table for four the size of an old-fashioned snakes-andladders board. However, managing to book that table was like winning the West Penwith lottery – the diners kept turning up long after 9.30, so that you could only feel sympathy for the hard-pushed waiting staff.

Covid restrictions haven’t helped and have definitely fuelled the contagion of bossiness.

“Now you’ve ordered, wait outside and we’ll shout,” barked a fish and chip shop employee in Newlyn, only to shout again a minute later… “Not that side! Those who’ve already placed orders queue on the left!”

But she was charm itself compared to the National Trust prison camp guards who now patrol St Michael’s Mount. I’m sure it used to be the case that you could stroll across at low tide and enjoy a stroll around the island’s quay area, only paying an entry fee if you went up to the castle.

Not any more. “Have you booked your visit to the island?” screamed a uniformed volunteer from the harbour walls as we approached across the empty sands, unaware that any such thing was necessary.

We were frog-marched back to the causeway and basically made to feel like low-life cheats. I will never go to one of my favourite islands ever again.

One ray of sunshine hit as I drove away from Marazion feeling as frazzled and put-upon as any Cornishman. My car starting making the most terrible noise from somewhere under the floor area and I pulled into Atlantic Motors in Hayle where a really nice guy called Nathan immediately dropped everything and fixed the problem within five minutes.

Well done Nathan and Atlantic Motors. You rescued my feelings about one of my favourite places on Earth.

Covid restrictions haven’t helped and have definitely fuelled the contagion of bossiness