In search of warmer climes, yesterday we drove to Clevedon, a unique, coastal Victorian town, according to the not exactly unbiased website Discover Clevedon. Somewhat disappointingly, we never found warmer climes, but we did enjoy a long walk along the sea front at this ‘unique coastal Victorian town’. And it was all right.
The website had an impressively long list of Things To Do, although closer examination revealed they were not all available on the day. There was no ‘park run’, I didn’t bring a skate board to visit the skate park, we didn’t need to get married again and the red flag was flying over the Marine Lake with signs saying – and these may not have been the actual words used, but you should get the message – “do not swim in here because the water is full of human faeces”. I did not personally observe actual turds floating on the surface but to my mild astonishment there were human turds SWIMMING IN THE SHIT. Indeed, there was a whole family wearing regular swimwear splashing in and out of the turd section and a man in proper wet gear swimming up and down, mostly swimming the front crawl. I dread to think what it was he occasionally must have swallowed but I’ll bet it didn’t always belong to him.
Putting all the shit to one side, Clevedon itself was rather lovely. A wonderful miniature railway chugged around the park area and weary parents encouraged their offspring to waste energy on the bouncy castles. We decided to walk all the way along the front to take a walk along Clevedon’s ancient and quite wonderful pier which, says my Bradshaws, as Michael Portillo would have it, “was opened in 1869 to receive paddle steamer passengers from Devon and Wales.” There are few paddle steamers on the Bristol Channel these days – in fact, I didn’t see so much as a rowing boat yesterday – but the pier is something to behold. How excited we were until we found it had already closed for the day by the time we got there.
All the real action in this unique, coastal Victorian town appears to be on the sea front, which is of course how seaside towns are supposed to be. There was a noisy amusement arcade for those who still use cash as a means of losing money, several coffee bars, an ice cream hut and a gorgeous smelling fish and chip shop which saw me call on every last ounce of willpower I had to not buy an unnecessary bag of chips. A couple of stone ago, I’d have been right in there and ordered a battered sausage just to be on the safe side.
Although Clevedon’s holiday crowd appears to encompass most age groups, I’d say that most people were on the wrong side of middle age, or the right side of middle age if being old is something you prefer to being young. There’s crazy golf, a wonderfully maintained and very well-populated bowling green and endless people doing what we were doing, which was taking gentle exercise why breathing in the fresh-ish Bristol Channel air.
There’s not much to do at Clevedon but I see that as a big positive. If you want a nice relaxing stroll beside the seaside, it’s top dollar. And it’s not hard to see why people love living there.
