There were terrible shrieks as six lobsters ran amok in the kitchen of the boarding house
IN OUR series, household names revisit their favourite childhood holiday destinations. This week, the crime writer PETER JAMES returns to the West Country resort where he wrote his first novel while still a teenager…
I’D WANTED to be a writer since childhood, and for my 17th birthday my dad bought me a portable electric typewriter, plus typing lessons with a battleaxe of a teacher.
I couldn’t wait to leave school and start work on my great British novel. I wanted to go somewhere rugged and do long, solitary walks by the ocean where I would compose the pages of my masterpiece. It had to be by the sea because, growing up in Brighton, it was in my blood.
A friend suggested Braunton in Devon, where he knew a boarding house run by two former music hall artists who had retired there.
Bob and Wynn Champion were utterly charming, but my friend had omitted to tell me that Braunton was not actually on the coast but several miles inland. Today a quick Google search would have revealed that…
But when you did actually get to the coast, what a coast! Nearby Saunton Sands was everything I dreamed of – miles of curving sandy beach with a beautiful rock promontory at one end and, thanks to the British weather at that time of the year, almost deserted.
The boarding house was a riot, filled with eccentric characters from Bob and Wynn’s music hall days. I remember hearing terrible screams one morning. I rushed down to the kitchen, where a wonderful guest’s plans to cook us all a lobster supper had gone wrong. He was standing, helpless and terrified at the kitchen table while six large, angry lobsters ran amok. So returning first to Braunton, and then Saunton Sands, some 56 years later has been an absolute delight.
Both the town and the surrounding area have changed but in a good way. Gone are the signs at the top of every boarding house with a list of offerings, including a Corby trouser press in every room!
Cool surf shops have sprung up everywhere – no more people with rolled up trousers and knotted hankies on their heads – and you can now actually get a decent cup of coffee. My wife, Lara, and I had one in the delightful The Worx
Cafe. A lot of boarding houses seem to have been usurped by Airbnb. We stayed in one, a converted sail loft in South Street – not a trouser press in sight, but a great fire pit. But the biggest change of all was in the quality of restaurants.
Coastal food in my youth was a sad affair of curly sandwiches, bad fish and chips, and cremated steak. Vegetarian? No problem, have the same dish without the meat!
Now it’s just wow, judging from the two brilliant restaurants we dined in – an evening meal at the superb New Coast Kitchen in Croyde, and an equally good roast at the Pyne Arms in East Down.
And the book? I finished it and called it Ride Down A Rollercoaster. Alas, it wasn’t the great novel I had hoped – but it did get me an agent. Hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere…