The Woolacombe Pussy Riot

One of the great things about travel is its unpredictability, or perhaps more precisely, that it involves a conscious choice to pursue the unexpected. Admittedly, these may be somewhat grandiose terms for a three night break in a Caravan and Motorhome Club site near Woolacombe. It's never going to trend on Guardian Travel like an account of crossing the Atacama by motorised skateboard, guerilla base jumping in Guangzhou or the pursuit of mindfulness in some ruined bothy in Ubhist A Tuath. Still, after months of being locked -up the prospect of a short break in North Devon acquired expedition status, with all the associated rituals of over preparation, list-making and Cassandra-like catastrophising.

Sorting the van out for the quick trip proved unexpectedly taxing, I think doing anything even mildly out of the ordinary has become a challenge after months of under stimulation and facile domesticity. I read an interesting article about Covid related 'brain fog', not the mysterious symptoms affecting a significant minority of people recovering from the virus, but cases of  mild cognitive disfunction reported by people generally. Certainly my memory has become more unreliable, I have been prone to mysterious mood swings, concentrating on a book or film is impossible and I keep finding myself in the kitchen wondering what I came in to do. Brain fog describes the the sensation perfectly.

The first section written by a neuroscientist about how we are hard-wired to notice change and animated by novel experiences, - a question of survival for our hunter gatherer forebears I suppose - explains why imposed under stimulation has prompted a collective cerebral miasma during lockdown.

It's a normal reaction, reflected if you think about it in idiomatic speech, we speak of things being mind crunchingly tedious or dead boring. It also accounts for why I seem much perkier while travelling, more enthusiastic and energetic, less assailed by dark rumination and irrational anxieties. It is not seeking bucket list hotspots or hoped for cherished memories that make travel good for the soul but the daily mundane uncertainties and the small unexpected delights, even minor glitches can raise your spirits. Somewhere new can never be humdrum.

Take today, we headed south from Cirencester towards the M4. This part of south Gloucestershire lies outside the Cotswolds area of outstanding beauty, a more lowland area, the upper valley of the Thames, with straggling villages and neat farms. A quieter landscape than the Cotswolds, but not unattractive, nor without its surprises. We rounded a corner and were confronted by a small flock of jumbo jets put out to pasture in a nearby field.

The Cotswold Airport is a commercial venture based in the disused RAF Kemble airbase. One of its specialities is dismantling retired airliners. Along with facemask manufacturers, Amazon, and Deliveroo, the pandemic must have heralded boom times for aircraft dismantlers as major airlines opt to retire their ageing fleets of Boeing 747s whose future looked increasingly doubtful due to environmental concerns even before Covid emptied the skies.

The vision of a line of BA liveried engineless Jumbos was a sad one, at least for someone who grew up in the 1970s. I understand that the imperative to reduce carbon emissions has sealed the aircraft's fate, but it has to rank as one of the icons of the latter part of the twentieth century. The Jumbo's first flight was in February 1969, about a month before Concorde's. Two visions of the aviation future, one supersonic for the elite, the other less technologically advanced but pitched towards the masses. The sales figures reveal which aircraft better anticipated the future, eventually after years of delay 20 Concorde's were built , to date Boeing have sold 1573 Jumbos. I have a soft spot for them, over the years they have whisked the Turpies to Florida, California, Tokyo and back from Brisbane. Despite all the environmental concerns, for people hooked on travel 747s are a symbol of escape. Joni Mitchell captures this perfectly in the final verse of 'Amelia',

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel

To shower off the dust

And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust

I dreamed of 747s

Over geometric farms

Dreams Amelia, dreams and false alarms

After this the remaining 140 miles or so to our destination felt humdrum, but not unpleasant, the landscape of Somerset and Devon does persuade you that England truly is a 'green and pleasant land'.

However on this particular Monday in mid-April, though bright and sunny, it was, as a native might describe it, a bit 'fresh'. We are not big fans of 'bracing' hence our propensity to head for the Med as much as we can, Right now we can't, so the choice is vegetate at home or be content to be invigorated in Devon. It transpired we had chosen a particularly invigorating spot,  

The Willingcott Caravan and Motorhome Club Site is less than two miles from the beach at Woolacombe, but the pitches spread across an exposed hillside 600 feet above the sea. An ideal moment to experiment with the dual fuel Truma heating system we decided (verdict, using the ehu supply might save LPG, but if you want to be cosy splash the gas). We decided against taking an evening stroll and watched an episode of 'The Young Montalbano' instead. Tomorrow we'll pedal down to Woolacombe we decided.

It is no accident that Woolacombe beach has been voted the UK's best om numerous occasions. Three miles of  pristine sand stretch between the Morthoe and Baggy Sands headlands. It is popular with families and surfers alike, though it is fair to say the latter far outnumbered the former this early in the season.

You have to admire the pluck of the seaside stalwarts hunched behind their stripy windbreaks, wrapped-up in cagouls, festooned with scarves.

I wrote in a post back in 2014 that although I love the sea I am not a fan of 'the seaside'. Nowhere over the intervening seven years has persuaded me to change my mind,, at least about the British version of it. What I said about Benlech in Anglesey back then remains equally true of Woolacombe today. What changed between then and now is the the tens of thousands of miles we have travelled, exploring the coasts of Europe following the shores of the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic both this side and the eastern seaboard of America,; the Pacific too, on our trip around New Zealand in 2018. It seems to be a universal human impulse to find solace by the ocean, yet each iteration of this need is expressed differently depending where you are. Whether strolling a faded broad walk in Atlantic City or the palm fringed  sands of St. Pete's Beach, Americans don't tend to laze about but walk briskly to and fro. In St  Tropez or Biarittz posing languorously is de rigueur, staring soulfully at the sea less important than being seen, Away from the Costas or the Algarve, Iberian beach culture is orientated around family and food, a long Sunday lunch in a shady Chiringuito prefered to sunbathing. Sweden's quiet sands are more outdoorsy, beach sports are the thing, family fun played with minimum fuss and clothing. 

However, in all our wanderings nowhere has displayed a seaside sociology as complex and intriguing as our home country.. This is because ambivalence lies at the core of our being, praise is given faintly, approval half-hearted -  things are 'not bad' rarely 'great',  we specialise in back handed  compliments and take our pleasures guiltily. The lodestone of Englishness is awkwardness born of embarrassment. It may be the barely noticed muzak of our everyday lives, but at the seaside its volume ramps up, like the intrusive soundtrack to a bad comedy. In big resorts like Blackpool or Bournemouth their essential naffness is ameliorated by a certain faded grandeur, small resorts like Woolacombe achieve grandeur through  the setting, the coastline here is unquestionably sublime. The contrast between the two, beautiful coastline and tawdry little resort was striking., Woolacombe felt bathetic, similar to the impression we got of Robimhood's Bay when we visited North Yorkshire a couple of years ago. 

In the mid-twentieth century I suppose tt was the saucy postcard or risible end of the pier show that captured the essential 'you are awful but I like you' aspect of the British seaside. At least in their heyday our resorts, great and small, exuded a raw plebeian energy, now they can seem melancholy places, out of kilter with the values and mores of the Tiktok generation. You would expect them to be full pensioners on coach trips, maybe in normal times they would be, but at the moment wth Covid restrictions on household mixing still in place, in fact it was mainly twenty somethings wandering about, not just surf dudes, but couples and young families. I reflected on this, maybe I am misreading the runes and failing to appreciated Woolacombe's appeal to a generation who expresses solidarity though posting ironically captioned selfies or a self-deprecating video clip on Instagram, media savvy and prone to undermine convention through parody.

A Tiktok moment drifted by as we played out our own trope of two pensioners sitting together on a bench eating pasties. The passers-by consisted of a young couple in their mid-twenties, their two kids, aged about five and seven and an older women in her fifties, grandma, I guess. Everything about them was perfectly ordinary apart from the arresting caption on the younger woman's tee-shirt - 'Big Thighs but Beautiful Eyes'. It was at least partially true, she was quite plump and wearing figure hugging lycra, However the veracity of the latter part of the statement proved impossible to ascertain as her eyes were hidden behind big sun-glasses. The caption was designed to be provocative and in that moment seemed to me to project a message about 'body-positivity - Lizzo at the seaside, I did not expect that. The context was perfect, 'fat woman at the beach' is one of the classic tropes of the British 'saucy postcard'.

The tee-shirt slogan drew on that conceit, then undermined it, a gentle admonishment of the deep seated misogyny couched within within traditional British humour, not just postcards, but the of the comedy of my youth -  Benny Hill, Carry-on films, Les Dawson and Bernard Manning. OK, the tee-shirt's assertion was hardly an outburst of feminist radicalism - Pussy Riot in Woolacombe - yet simply displaying the slogan took  a certain bravado like a #metoo generation riposte to Half Man Half Biscuit's  'Totnes Bickering Fair' .

After months of lockdown when our take on the world has been mediated through a screen, experiencing life in the raw took some adjustment. It is quite easy to succumb to the misapprehension  that  what comes at you through the TV or social media resembles life in the flesh,.it doesn't. Our particular confusion of the virtual with the real has concerned food mainly. So far 2021 has been very gastro orientated. My daughter and her partner have been staying with us for the past six months. Unlike me, Gill, Sarah and Rob are all accomplished cooks, they take food seriously and with little else to do gastronomy has loomed large in our lives. We have watched hours of Anthony Bourdain on Netflix; and Rick Stein's summery food pilgrimage through Cornwall brightened the dark days of January. There have been earnest discussions concerning Felicity Cloake's in-depth investigation into what makes the perfect fish pie, we have reflected on Jay Rayner's 'last supper' and our mundane existence has been brightened by a weekly dose of Grace Dent. Her fame as a regular guest critic on Masterchef overshadows the genius of  her writing,  real literary heft hides in plain sight in her weekly food  column for the Guardian, a thought provoking cultural commentator as much as a a food writer. 

What all these writers have done is widen our appreciation of good food beyond the elite niche of fine dining, not only celebrating the UK's willingness to embrace world food but also championing great British produce and cookery. So when we needed to find somewhere to have lunch in Woolacombe, even though social distancing meant eating outdoors, we were hopeful we might find something delicious on offer. After reading the on-line reviews we decided 'Fudgies Bakery' might be the place, 'Incredible and delicious range of pasties' enthused one reviewer', another, 'The best vegan pasty I have ever eaten in my many years of being a vegan surfer from Devon.' The bakery had 46 reviews, all but three of them gave it five stars. I anticipated the delight of a genuine West Country pasty, simple but delicious like something Rick Stein might have bought from a food truck parked on some quaint quayside in  Cornwall.

They weren't. We both opted for the beef with stilton ones, sadly they were barely heated through and were  bland, under-seasoned and utterly tasteless. Gill managed about three bites before commenting 'my mouth deserves better than this'. I ate half of mine, then decided I'd had enough too. Is this what coming out of lockdown is going to be like? Adjusting our expectations downwards until they match the mundanity of everyday life; is it the case that optimists are simply people who manage their disappointment more effectively than most? On that downbeat note we headed back to the van back the same way we came after failing to make it up the impossibly steep slope to the south of the town waymarked as National Cycle route 27. Back at the site, though it was bright and sunny, it was too cold to sit out. We did a bit of spring cleaning in the van, then Gill knitted for a bit and I made some notes on my phone's note app. Normality resumed unobtrusively, maybe the world will return in the same way T. S. Eliot thought it would  end -  'not with a bang but a whimper'.