LIFE IN A HONEYPOT
As restrictions ease, tourists are again descending on popular haunts. For those who live in these hotspots, the return of visitors brings mixed feelings, writes Tim Hubbard, resident of the pretty Cornish village of Mousehole
What’s it like to live in a pretty coastal village beloved by tourists? Go behind the scenes in Mousehole with resident Tim Hubbard.
Midsummer in Mousehole. Gulls call and a sea breeze whips around the harbour walls. Sunburnt families coming out of the icecream shop begin to notice a strange smell in the air. Fish being landed? Pasties cooking? Sunblock?
It’s actually the smell of a burning clutch as a 4x4 driver, with bikes strapped to the back, tries to manoeuvre out of his parking space on North Quay and drive up the cobbled slope out of the village. An elderly local man, leaning on the harbour railing gives a wry smile; he’s seen it all before.
But, of course, he hasn’t seen it for quite a while now. The Covid pandemic has meant that visitor numbers to this tiny harbour village at the far-western tip of the UK have been virtually nil. Superficially, lockdown life was good here; the sun still shone (sometimes), we could still gaze out to sea, watch dolphins in the bay and go for walks on the cliffs. When we ventured out of our own ‘mouse holes’, we knew everyone we met and smiled and chatted to each other behind our masks, commenting on how lovely it was when the village was so quiet.
However, for many
people, things weren’t that good. There was no work in the pub or the gift shop or for the small army of self-catering cottage housekeepers and cleaners who descend on the village on ‘changeover days’, armed with reinforcements of clean laundry and an arsenal of cleaning products.
Deborah Tonkin, whose business looks after some two dozen properties here, says it was a difficult time. “It was hard. The work and the income just weren’t there for my housekeeping teams and not knowing when – or even if – things would improve meant it was very stressful for everyone.”
At the village’s Solomon Browne Community Hall, manager Tamsin Harvey was amazed by how quickly people came together to help each other. “In March 2020, we sat down with a hand-drawn map and marked every single house in which we knew someone lived who was potentially vulnerable in one way or another. There’s a strong sense of community here anyway, but throughout each of the lockdowns we have supported more than 60 households with practical help as well as lots of individuals with more specific needs.”
There were other concerns: as national pandemic numbers rose, people worried that Cornwall’s only major hospital – an hour’s drive away in Truro – would not have enough resources for residents, let alone visitors. It was said that if Covid came to Mousehole, it would be because of visitors ignoring national regulations. Feelings ran high across Cornwall and, elsewhere, ‘Tourists go home!’ signs appeared on farm gates and in boarded-up shop windows.
Everyone closed their doors, only venturing out for a pint of milk from the shop or a takeaway from the village deli. The sea has always provided food for the village and, despite the winter storms, some fishermen still managed to put out crab and lobster pots and get to sea. We felt suitably guilty when, after being offered a lobster from that day’s catch, we ate it with samphire from the shore while watching TV reports of supermarket shortages.
Then, this spring, lockdown began to loosen. Ever so gradually, like the tide coming in over the sand, unfamiliar people began to be seen in the village. A wave of house-hunters, anxious to avoid another city-bound lockdown, deluged local estate agents, pushing already high prices even higher. Some Mousehole properties now break the £1m barrier and while some locals have profited from the boom, others now feel disaffected and say they’ve been forced to move away. Second-home owners were now allowed to travel to “maintain and administer” their properties. Some residents were unhappy that while the letter of the law was being adhered to, the underlying message of “stay local” was not. Arguments ensued. Curtains twitched. Lights on at night in previously dark houses were reported. The slang Cornish expression for tourist is ‘emmet’, which in the ancient
Kernewek (Cornish) language means ‘ant’; the emmets began to swarm. As the Government opened up holiday cottage bookings from April 12, it was as if a tap of visitors had been turned on.
THE STING IN THE TAIL
At times, living in a goldfish-bowl village such as this, or even in larger towns such as Padstow or St Ives, the influx of visitors can feel overwhelming. A pretty cottage on the harbourside, with its downstairs bedrooms facing the wharf, has tourists pressing their faces to the windows for a view inside and we’ve had cliff-path hikers insist that they’ve opened the gate and come into our garden because “this is the way to the coastal trail isn’t it?”.
“The village has certainly changed over the years,” says Avis Bird, who was born here. “There are just so many tourists these days – August can be awful – and many of them leave their common sense behind when they pack to go on holiday. They park so that ambulances can’t get through or they get cut off by the tide, but you just have to live with it.”
Howard and Julie Whitt have lived in Mousehole for over 30 years. They say it’s not the people themselves who are the problem, it’s the traffic. “We have such narrow streets here,” says Julie, “and as the design of cars has got bigger, people seem less able to drive them properly.” Howard adds: “Working life has to go on. Dustbin lorries, fish transport from the quay, meals-on-wheels drivers – they all have tight schedules and can’t wait while someone leans out of a car window to take a photograph.” A common complaint is that drivers who are used to ‘A’ roads and dual carriageways aren’t used to reversing, which is a skill frequently needed in small lanes.
But visitors bring their money with them. Cornwall’s old economic ‘holy trinity’ of fishing, farming and mining has virtually collapsed (though agriculture is still the county’s main economic driver). Tourism is the new tin, entrepreneurs work from home rather than in the fields, and improved new technology rules the (air)waves rather than the pilchard fleet.
Times change quickly but people less so. Tourists will always come to beautiful places but they can never know them like locals do – when the first primroses are blooming on the cliff; where the seals come ashore; who has the best village gossip. I’m so lucky to be here all the time. When you choose to live in a honeypot, while there might be the occasional sting, on the whole life is sweet.