We’re all going on a... washout holiday
Complicated rules, expensive testing, an ever-changing traffic light system – is it any wonder so many of us are, like Boris, having a staycation? Guy Kelly heads to the English riviera to experience an ‘it is what it is’ holiday
The road to any British seaside resort is paved with good intentions. Torquay’s certainly is. “Riviera Way”, it’s called – the winding route from the A380 towards the Devon town. It is an early assault of irony that leads to a bombardment.
“Welcome to the English Riviera”, signage declares, further down the hill. “Torquay: Naturally Inspiring”, reads another. Some talk of a “famous microclimate”. Wikipedia even has the gumption to claim Torquay’s post-war tower blocks give it “a Monte Carlo feel”.
It’s a Thursday, in this forced summer of mass staycations, and the holidaymakers are here in their thousands. Had it not been for the restless nature of the Department for Transport’s traffic light system for travel, they could have been in Turkey, the Balearics, the Pyrenees or the Caribbean. As it is, they’re here, on the English Riviera. And it’s raining.
I don’t mean “raining” as in a bit of drizzle. It isn’t a fine sea mist dancing off the Channel. I mean hysterical, horizontal, why-did-we-ever-thinkthis-was-a-good-idea rain. In other words, British summer weather.
“We’ve just driven seven hours from Wigan for this – left at 5am,” says Simon Halliwell, a 45 year-old talent manager, hiding under Paignton pier with his family. “Yeah,” his wife, Jo, chips in from beneath a yellow raincoat, “and we should have stayed there.” The kids, Joe, 11, and eight-year-old Alfie, protest loudly.
“We went to Newquay for a week last summer, it didn’t stop raining,” Halliwell says, with a cheerfulness somewhere between heroic and deranged. But you… came back? “Ha, yeah!”
They’re staying in a caravan for nine days, and like many people, had hoped to go abroad. Tenerife in March, specifically, bringing Alfie’s best mate along as a surprise, but cancelled due to the uncertainty. “It’ll clear up,” Halliwell says, staring at the duvet of slate grey cloud swaddling Torbay, “this is just British holidays for you, isn’t it?”
It is, Simon, it really is. For the second year in a row, Boris Johnson has insisted that staycations (yes, that technically means staying at home, but please, pedants, down tools) are just as good as going abroad, and promising to take his own UK break this month.
“This is a great, great year for people to take a staycation… I’m certainly going to be doing that,” Johnson told the nation in July 2020. Thirteen months later, we’re still largely staycationing. Even the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge returned to the Isles of Scilly for their summer break. And they could go anywhere.
In the right conditions, staycations would be a fine thing. But so would chance, and chance – or at least luck – is the one thing you need and the one thing you can’t pack. To holiday in the British summer is to buy a meteorological lottery ticket. Like any lottery, hardly anyone hits the jackpot.
“You have to take the rough with the smooth really, don’t you?” says Wes Pritchard, 43, a plant operator from Stafford, who’s down for the week with his family. He’s on the beach with Isla, his six-year-old, who’s chasing seagulls and having a terrific time. Pritchard, too, would rather be in Tenerife, but considers it safer to stay domestic. “I used to come here as a kid,” he says, “we’ll make the best of it.” It’s an optimism you can still find, even in these conditions. Nearby are two campervans, one with a “Happy 13th Birthday” banner sellotaped to the side, flapping about madly in the wind. The birthday boy is Bailey Cook, who’s just had a nosebleed. His dad, Michael, a 34-year-old car breaker, is sanguine. The extended family are on a tour of the South West from Gloucestershire. “You wake up each morning, see what the weather’s doing, then decide what to do,” he says, squinting out at the Queen Victoria cruise ship, anchored in the bay but barely visible.
Had it not been on the red list, they were meant to be in Marmaris, on the Turkish Riviera, where it is currently 39C. Like some quirk of autocorrect, he’s in Turkey’s near-homonym, on the English Riviera, where it is currently… not 39C. He shrugs, then utters that glorious contemporary cliché of resignation: “It is what it is, really.”
The pier is deserted, save for a couple of locals who have come precisely because it’s deserted. Arcade machines whirr forlornly. An ice cream vendor is on a cigarette break. He needn’t hurry back. In the monsoon, even a life-size statue of Batman looks as if he’s crying. On second glance, he might just be wet. I consult my watch, to confirm it’s not November. Nope, somehow still August. Plenty of time to head to a campsite – that lot will be peppy. Torquay’s tourism website boasts that it is the “Top Trending” destination for staycation hunters this year. If the seafront hotels are full, there are plenty of tent and caravan pitches to be had. Just inland, Dave Wilkins, 57, a chef from Penzance, has one with his family. They’re here for three days, and concede Majorca might have been nicer.
“I guess we’ll find something to do, it’s not so bad – I think we’ll go to the zoo today,” he says, poking his head from a small four-man tent with his 13-year-old son, Alfie. “It’s the British weather, isn’t it? Can’t do a lot about it.”
It’s now so wet that my jeans have become jeggings. Around the campsite, those who aren’t in their tents, staring at the canvas, are under awnings, staring at the rain. Some have hung washing on lines. It is an act of lunacy so tragic, yet so British, that it momentarily warms me.
But if anything, it starts to rain harder. When I was a schoolboy, I was amazed to learn that 60 per cent of the human body is comprised of water. Today I wouldn’t blink if you told me I was 143 per cent made of the stuff.
At another campsite up the road, I find one family who have taken the only practical step left: evacuation. Jim Moulton, 47, trains firefighters in Worcestershire. He’s dismantling a tent under the watchful, confused eyes of Fred the red setter, and with the haste of a man who has little time to be asked questions.
“You off?” I ask.
“Yep, we were meant to be leaving on Saturday, but tomorrow doesn’t look any better, so…”
His son and daughter have already gone, leaving Pritchard and his wife, Charlotte. Last year they were in Woolacombe, on the north Devon coast, in winds so fierce Pritchard sat up at 3am and typed the following words into Google: “Can a caravan take off?” Now they’re back in the county, and dreaming of Ibiza.
“I don’t know when we’ll next be abroad. We can’t get away – my daughter’s just had Covid, but I won’t have the jab,” he says, folding a chair up.
Oh, why’s that?
“Don’t trust it, I won’t even take paracetamol.”
He may be staycationing for some time. So might we all, if the traffic lights continue playing up. It is easy to mock British holidays, but that’s hardly a reason not to. Part of the fun is that they are invariably very little fun, and after all, we live on a bonkers, brilliant, unpredictable little island where no two days are the same. It’s no surprise that respite is hard to come by.
On the Torquay seafront, I take another look at the scene, which hasn’t changed since a curtain of rain was drawn across it at dawn. By the lifeless funfair, an advertising hoarding flutters in the squall. “Family Escapes”, it reads. Finally, a sign is accurate. Shall we all just go abroad next year?