The summer holidays were a washout as far as my children are concerned, because we had to cancel our trip to Norway when I discovered two of their passports had expired. But in an effort to make it up to them, I managed to squeeze in a trip to Salcombe last weekend. Unfortunately, I failed to factor in the eye-watering expense of spending two days in the south Devon coastal town. It cost me the best part of £2,000.
I’ve had cheaper meals at a London restaurant with three Michelin stars – and this was a beach shack
Salcombe must be the most expensive seaside resort in Britain. For instance, a seafood platter for two at the Crab Shed, where I booked lunch on Sunday, will set you back £148.A single crab is £32.50, even though you can look up from your table and see small children pulling crabs out of the sea by the bucketload. No doubt the mark-up is because only highly skilled chefs can bung one of these crustaceans into a pan of boiling water. Caroline’s dish of linguine in tomato sauce, the ingredients of which cannot have cost more than £2.50, came to £18.50. I’ve had cheaper meals at London restaurants with three Michelin stars, and this was essentially a no-frills beach shack with a couple of teenage girls on waitress duty.
The reason we ended up in Salcombe is because Caroline and I were invited to stay by friends who’d taken a house there for a week. We wanted to go, but thought it would be mean to leave our children behind, not least because it’s Ludo’s last weekend before he goes off to university. So we rented an Airbnb for the kids, then concluded it would be easier to stay in it ourselves rather than shuttle between the two properties. That worked out at £740 for two nights.
Admittedly, Salcombe is pretty. The harbour is full of sailboats, a sandy beach is a ten-minute ferry ride away (although the return ticket was £5 a head) and there are some beautiful houses dotted along the coastal path. Until about ten years ago, I liked to browse the local estate agents’ windows when visiting places like this, telling myself it wouldn’t be long before I could afford a second home. Now that I’ve reached the age of 60 without paying off the mortgage, that illusion has been shattered. As I passed prosperous-looking gentlemen standing outside their homes, uncoupling their boats from 4x4s, I felt a spurt of class envy. ‘You rich bastards,’ I thought. ‘How many old ladies did you fleece to afford that?’ For the first time in my life, I began to understand why people vote Labour.
On Saturday, having had my fill of mullet-haired teens in sailing gear, I dragged the family off to an agricultural show, promising them a glimpse of ‘real’ country life. Apart from the entry fee (£70 for six of us), it proved a welcome respite from Salcombe. Huntsmen paraded around a paddock showing off their hounds, three different breeds of goat were on display in the children’s tent, and there was an impressive line-up of vintage tractors. The high point was entering Mali, our five-year-old cavapoochon, in the dog show in the ‘prettiest bitch’ category and coming sixth. That was particularly satisfying, because our friends entered their dog in the same category and didn’t get a look in.
But the afternoon ended in disaster when we got stuck in a long queue to exit the car park. It had started to rain and the patch of ground at the entrance began to get muddy, with the attendants telling every driver to inch their way across it to avoid turning it into a bog. You’d have thought they could have put some hay down – aren’t rural folk supposed to be good at navigating these hazards? – but that didn’t seem to have occurred to any of the farmers present. It took us two hours to get out, by which time the children were going stir crazy.
We drove back on Sunday after lunch at the Crab Shed. What should have been a four-and-a-half-hour journey took six because the children insisted on taking turns to sit in the rearmost seat in our VW Touran, which meant stopping at three different service stations to swap places. That inevitably involved trips to KFC and Burger King, not to mention ‘snacks for the journey’. We passed the time by playing ‘after dinner’ games, although that may be a misnomer since the children were eating almost continuously. In truth, even though it was a ruinously expensive weekend, it was nice to spend time with the kids, who are becoming less and less dependent on their parents. We fantasised about spending the summer of 2026 driving across America in a Winnebago, stopping off at cities along the route to watch England compete in the World Cup. But I daresay we won’t be able to afford it.
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