Not alone in not belonging

Like half the nation, binge-watching Rick Stein's sunny homage to Cornwall helped us through the darkest days of lockdown in January. 

Though more nuanced and thought provoking, Simon Reeves' two part documentary also explored the unique landscape and heritage of England's soulful far west. 

Given our media curated culture where what happens on screen has real world consequences, inevitably we found Cornwall crowded and traffic choked. Equally, it is crass to complain when you are part of the problem. 

Today's Guardian ran a piece reporting that the cost of a two week holiday in August for family of four in a static caravan near Newquay was over £3,600, far higher than a package holiday in the Mediterranean. Maybe prices are astronomical in August, but in fairness that was not our experience, the sites right now are busy and pre-booking mandatory, but at an average cost of £18.37 per night they were not expensive. I don't like crowded places and everywhere was, the motorway stop start for 250 miles, Wadebridge town centre traffic choked and hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists alike, queues for the bike hire shops along the Camel trail.  

Because we travel off-season,  mainly in the autumn, winter and early spring we are unused to mass tourism. I suppose the only times we encounter it is when our travels accidentally coincide with one of Spain's many local festivals or a regional wide "community day'. Even then we found  even in  'hotspots' quite often only a few hundred metres from the main attraction places can be almost empty. To some extent the same was true today on the Camel trail. Near Wadebridge and Padstow it was crowded, a tricky combination of family groups out walking mixed with gaggles of cyclists weaving in between buggies, toddlers and overexcited cockapoos . It was not relaxing. 

The middle section was quieter. Estuaries come into their own when unpeopled, a great place to find solitude, an ever changing vista; the turn of the tide or differing light conditions transforming them moment by moment.

They are one of my favourite landscapes. I find them pleasingly melancholic, there is solace to be found in emptiness.

The moment of tranquillity was short lived. Even from a distance you could tell Padstow was crowded, sunlight glinting off serried rows of windscreens in the harbourside car park. We locked the bikes to some railings at the end of the trail deciding it would be easier to walk into the centre.

The Wikipedia entry about Padstow refers to the fact It has been dubbed 'Padstein due to the number of Rick Stein branded businesses in the place. I took this to be simply a piece of tabloid nonsense until we chatted to local people. They all seemed to have some anti-Rick story to tell. Twice we were warned off eating at his fish and chip place. Overpriced and poor quality we were advised.. A fellow camper recounted another odd story. He lived in Plymouth and worked as a joiner for a shop fitting firm. After doing some work in the Tesco store in Padstow to extend the fresh fish counter he had to return soon afterwards to dismantle it. He was told that Rick Stein's company had lobbied the supermarket chain to remove it as it competed with their businesses in the town.

It all seemed a bit strange, was the mild mannered, avuncular TV cook really the Jeff Bezos of Cornwall's catering industry? I don't simply accept things at face value, this required further investigation...

So far as the fish and chips were concerned, it's true, they are more expensive than those on offer down by the old harbour. It is possible to find a portion of cod and chips for a little more than half the cost the same thing at Rick's place. The thing is, what is on offer is delicious, the fish flakey and perfectly cooked, the batter light, the chips  perfect, crispy on the outside squidgy in the middle.

A full portion is too much for us at lunchtime, especially when we are cycling, so we tend to share. The question comes down to personal preference, a half portion of something delicious or a full portion of boring beige food? It costs the same. 

As for the Tesco story, I Googled it. The closure of deli and fish counters in 2019 looks to have been part of a national cost cutting exercise affecting 97 of the company's large stores in across the UK and Ireland. It had nothing to do with the presence of Rick Stein in Padstow. In fact his presence is beneficial, at least the locals here still have a fishmongers, and one commited to selling local produce not trucking in fish from a warehouse in Grimsby.

However, just because something is factually incorrect does not stop being interesting. People's fairy stories tell of unspoken attitudes and desires. This is surely the case so far as localism is concerned. Even though Rick Stein has owned a restaurant in Padstow for half a century, his latest venture was discussed locally as if he was an upstart interloper on the make. 

Why this might be is not simple. Partly it's to do with our national ambivalence towards success. Achieving celebrity status does involve celebration and approval, but also vilification and a fair measure of schadenfreude. Being perceived as an incomer makes matters worse, think Megan Marckle! Also, it seems in all communities there is an unspoken divide between residents and locals. To achieve the latter status you need at least one grandparent living locally and preferably clutch of uncles aunts and cousins nearby, a recognisable local accent helps too. Even if you achieve all these things but have a less than pale complexion, or more latterly hale from Eastern Europe, then you will never be a proper local but pigeonholed as belonging to some semi-mythical 'BAME' community.

In short the status of being a local is not something you can choose for yourself, it is bestowed by how other people regard you. Even though we have lived in Buxton for 35 years and both worked nearby for all of them we are still regarded as incomers, likewise our kids even though they grew up in the town. Our daughter has been back  home since  November while she and her partner look for an apartment to buy in London. Once lockdown eased and they were able to get out and about, the locals they met on walks in the Peak District, or in pubs and cafés all assumed they were on holiday. Their accent and demeanour set  them apart. 

However perhaps your own outlook and attitude had some bearing on being. permanently consigned to 'resident status'.  In my case it may be a consequence of having little sense of belonging apart from to my immediate family; being associated with a particular locality, community or nation is largely unimportant to me. Not that I am disinterested in place, in fact I am fascinated by it. Perhaps it is that  contradiction - weak sense of belonging, strong sense of place - that turned me into an inveterate traveller.

We mulled over some of these issues while sitting on a low wall near Rick's posh chip shop as half the world wandered by. Our plan was to have a look at Padstow's old harbour then go for a walk towards the lighthouse on the cliffs at the river mouth. 

It was a struggle to walk through the town, it teemed with visitors, so much so that a short queue had formed in front of the steps that connected the harbour to the path that led to the cliff side walk. 

"It's as bad as the Cinque Terre," Gill observed. Though we have visited the famed villages on the Ligurian coast twice we have never managed to walk along the beautiful footpath between them due to queues of people waiting to take their turn. It was not a problem I had expected to find in Cornwall, but with all foreign travel banned I suppose it is not so surprising.

We decided to head back, taking a route through Padstow's backstreets spread across the steep hill behind the harbour. They were utterly deserted, in sharp contrast to the scrum nearby. It illustrated perfectly the effects of mass tourism on small communities, the centre overwhelmed by visitors but houses in the backstreets locked up, occasionally occupied as second homes, many of the larger ones divided into holiday apartments. It was a sad sight to behold, a beautiful mixture of vernacular housing, most  occupied only occasionally, very few of them indeed providing permanent homes for local families. 

On way here we noticed a pop-up coffee stall on the trail. We decided to stop off on the way back. We know exactly what we like, a single espresso with a small jug of steamed milk on the side. 

The problem is every country has a different name for it, in Italy, a macchiato, France, une noisette, Spain, cortado, Portugal, um pingo. On the whole the UK has adopted the Italian term, but you don't always get the same thing, sometimes it resembles a flat white in a small cup or an underachieving cappuccino. A cortado means something else altogether here. Gill is uncompromising about this. If the shot hits the spot she is delighted, however, to quote the mighty Ru Paul, when the barista 'fucks it up' she becomes disconsolate. In order to minimise disappointment rather than order coffee by type we now try to describe what we want - single espresso with steamed milk in the side, it's still a bit of a lottery, but it does result in Gill having fewer disconsolate moments. The guy running the pop-up advised us that what we were actually asking for was 'a piccolo'. We had not come across that term before, so of course we had to Google it. So, what IS the difference between a piccolo and a macchiato? A Melbourne on-line lifestyle magasine came to the rescue:

Macchiato

Often called an espresso macchiato, a macchiato is an espresso shot is served in a glass with a small amount of milk added. The milk is usually foamed and spoon-dropped on top of the coffee by the barista. It has less water than a long black and you can order a is a ‘short’ (one shot) or ‘long’ (two shots).

Piccolo

Somewhere between a café latte, macchiato and cortado, a piccolo is a single espresso shot topped up with milk in a 90ml glass. Essentially, more coffee, less milk. A perfect chaser if you started your breakfast with a latte and need another quick kick to get moving.

By this definition though the Camel Estuary barista thought he had supplied us with a piccolo, it looked and tasted like a classic  Italian macchiato. Accidently we  got what we wanted. This is a really great coffee, we agreed. Gill then reeled off other memorable coffee moments - great coffees in beautiful settings: After breakfast overlooking Lake, Taupo, by the taxi rank in Taomina, accompanied by freshly made cannoli, Fidel's Cafe on Cuba St. in Wellington, that bakery next to Teatro Pirandello in Agrigento, or the one at the small gelateria down the street from  Palazzo Landolina in Noto.... Yes, I agreed all great caffine shots in memorable places, though it did strike me almost every single place was associated with vulcanism, I detected geological bias here. This requires further research, in Naples, Stomboli, or a long haul trip to Chile to find the ultimate macchiato with a volcano view. By these criteria Cornwall cannot compete, nevertheless the view from Atlantic Express coffee stand was lovely.

All in all it's been an interesting day. Even in England we can find places that meet our 'mission statement' about exploring new places. We don't know Cornwall at all, it's a foreign country at home, admittedly a long way from home. Le Touquet is closer.