Campervan Man tours England's coasts

Camper van man tours England's coasts

Camper van man Chris Haslam is coming to the coast near you on a six week summer tour!

The following blog first appeared in The Times newspaper and at www.timesonline.co.uk

Camper van man: Southend to Skegness

It’s the first day of my search for England's best beaches, and it’s not going well. Southend-on-Sea, I decided, didn’t count. The reason: it’s not on sea and never has been. It’s Southend-on-Thames, offering not the humbling vista of the earth’s curvature but the dismal view of an oil refinery on the Kent shoreline.

Because of this, the town has turned its back on the beach, hiding it beneath honking, blinking, clattering distractions designed so we hopefully won’t notice that we’re not at the seaside at all.

Then, in Clacton-on-Sea, an old lady walked in front of the van without warning. Shaken, I pulled over, and stepped onto the neglected stretch of coast known as God’s waiting room. Graffiti soils the walls, the grand hotels have become retirement homes, and for most of those loitering in the litter-strewn streets, the only way out of here is in a box.

A brown tide had covered the beach, and families were gravitating, zombie-like, to the pier. I followed, avoiding the plaintive eyes of an underworked fortune-teller – nonagenarians can pretty much guess their future – and took a seat in the Jolly Roger cafe.

“It’s a bit grim here,” I said to the waitress as she brought my tea. She rolled her eyes. “It’s Clacton,” she sighed. Then it started to rain, and suddenly I knew why that old lady had jumped in front of the van.

Yet the sun suddenly came out as I arrived in Walton on the Naze, illuminating an unexpected delight. The pier, admittedly, is a carbuncle, the Victorian skeleton covered in a yellow carapace to keep the slot machines dry, and it divides the resort like an Iron Curtain.

To the north, ragged rows of muddled houses stand like broken teeth above the award-winning Albion beach; to the south, a shantytown of beach huts rises in tiers above the dog-friendly Southcliff beach. Hut No 5, on the exclusive front row, could be yours for £7,800.

“I’ve been coming here for 70 years and I hope I die here,” announced a stout old battle-axe staring seaward from the prom. I asked her name.

“Jennings,” she replied. “First name?” “Mrs,” she growled.

One block back from the beach, the charming High Street has all the usual seaside outlets: a Vietnamese gift shop, a tattoo parlour and that Essex essential, the samurai-sword outlet. I ate meaty jellied eel and mash in Whites (95 High Street) for £2.80 before crossing the Stour and entering Suffolk.

I’d have missed Felixstowe had it not been for the demands of a reader, Annie X, that I sample the delicious homemade ice cream at the Little Ice Cream Co. The town is tasty, too: clean, invigorating and friendly.

There’s a hint of the Costa Brava here – especially where the Spa Gardens tumble in a fragrant avalanche down the low cliffs to the shingle beach. Once again, the town is demarcated by its defunct pier: to the south, it’s all neon and chips, while to the north, gourmet ice cream, stylish pubs and the Spa Pavilion offer a more refined experience. A beach hut here could cost you £15,000 – surely a sign that Felixstowe is going places.

That night, I parked the Mystery Machine – as my kids have named the Volkswagen camper – across the River Deben at the seaside hamlet of Shingle Street, a remote row of eerie houses on the fringe of a stony beach that is as gothic as Dungeness is twee.

Alone – the family have yet to join me – I dined beneath a waxing moon on Mersea oysters and ale before falling asleep to the sound of the sea.

At 5:15 the next morning, a duck landed on the roof of the Mystery Machine, jumped up and down and quacked. The sunrise finished the job so I brewed coffee, then followed narrow lanes north through leafy, sun-dappled tunnels to Aldeburgh, where a bearded fisherman had dragged his boat up the steep shingle to his stall. He ignored the orchestra practising on the beach and pretended not to notice the loitering artists recording his day.

Fresh fish aren’t the only goodies on sale in this pretty Georgian town – they unload culture here by the boatload, too. The 61st Aldeburgh Festival has just finished but August heralds the start of the month-long Snape Proms (01728 687110, www. aldeburgh.co.uk), featuring the Budapest Gypsy Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony and the Britten-Pears Orchestra. There’s live theatre at the Jubilee Hall (01728 453007/454022), fine art and fine wines on sale in the High Street – and not a slot machine in sight.

Walberswick comes as a delightful surprise, a charming time warp that liked the 1950s so much it never moved on. You could take the foot ferry to Southwold, sunbathe on the long, sandy beach or simply sit on the village green dreaming about downsizing to a place where rose-tinted glasses aren’t necessary as they paint their houses pink.

But enough whimsy: Walberswick is all about the crabbing. On August 10, the banks of the River Blyth will be lined with hundreds of families competing in the 28th British Open Crabbing Championship (www.explorewalberswick.co.uk). Use your £50 winnings for a round in the 600-year-old Bell Inn, but leave early: the devil dog they call Black Shuck is said to prowl the marshes.

Southwold is Aldeburgh’s little sister, but where Aldeburgh seduces with her intellect, Southwold gets by on looks. And she’s a stunner, combining Austenesque charm with a blonde fringe of beach. For all her coquettish air, though, she’s surprisingly cagey about letting you stay the night.

“We’re very short of accommodation here,” sighed the barman in the Lord Nelson, “but I can ring round for you, if you like.”

Thanks, pal, but I’ve got the Mystery Machine.

I finished my pint of Adnams and walked down North Parade to the pier. This award-winning redevelopment has been tinkered with by the mad scientist Tim Hunkin – his take on the Photo-Me booth involves jets of air and a dropping seat to capture expressions more entertaining than a smile.

Imagine an amusement arcade designed by Wallace and Gromit and you’ll get the idea. And the beach huts? “We’re so bored of people banging on about the bloody beach huts,” sighed the shop assistant. Suffice to say that they have been reported to sell for more than £90,000.

I stopped in Lowestoft to see if the millions spent on the new prom had done justice to the fabulous beach and revitalised the old place. “Not really,” said the beach manager. “The sand here is so fine that people think we import it. The council doesn’t realise what an asset we’ve got. This could be a world-class resort.” It could be – but it’s not.

Great Yarmouth, on the other hand, most certainly is: an unashamedly working-class seaside resort that has been making money from brine since 1759.

Hard to love by night, when Booze Britain invades the Golden Mile (“Welcome to Great Yarmouth,” says a police notice. “We expect you not to use the street as a toilet”), the huge strip is a fine rainy-day retreat, with two piers, indoor gardens, an aquarium and even indoor crazy golf.

I awoke to blue skies and headed north, following the B1159 – Norfolk’s version of the Pacific Coast Highway – to Cromer. The golden sands run unbroken behind a wall of dunes, a slice of the Skeleton Coast transplanted to the North Sea and studded with old-fashioned family favourites including Sea Palling – thanks to reader Alice Weatherly for the tip-off – with its Caribbean ambience, Happisburgh (say “Hazeborough” to fit in with the locals), Bacton and lovely Mundesley, where

it’s hard to believe that 16 trainloads of the bucket-and-spade brigade would arrive daily in its Edwardian heyday.

The railway has long gone but the gentle charm remains, and the crab sandwiches from the lobster shack in the car park are reason enough to visit. No beach huts for sale at Wells-next-the-Sea, where reader Sally Thomsett (surely not the Sally Thomsett?) writes to insist I catch crabs from the harbour wall. I always thought piranha fishing was the easiest form of angling, but with a 99p crab line and a strip of bacon rind, I’m reeling them in faster than the amateurish six-year-old standing next to me. Then he catches a monster and gives me a look. You know the look.

“Most of them crabs get caught three or four times a day in summer,” says local George Bowyer. “They’re professionals.”

Wells’s beach is spectacular, Holkham’s even better, but Brancaster, insists reader Tim Clement, boasts west Norfolk’s best. “I used to go with my grand-parents,” he says. “Now I take my grandchildren.”

The beach, complete with wreck, is a shimmering desert of rippled sands, and if you can find the sea, you’ll hike another quarter of a mile before it’s deep enough to swim in. Inshore channels and lagoons offer safe paddling, but keep an eye on the children: the tide rushes in like a freight train.

Hunstanton, or Sunny Hunny as the locals call it, is a sedate Victorian resort of push-chairs and mobility scooters, but not for much longer. The town has just realised that the shallow, sheltered waters of the Wash are perfect for pretty much every extreme watersport from wakeboarding to kitesurfing, and wants to rebrand itself as an adrenaline centre to rival Newquay. A good idea? “I don’t think so,” grimaced a blazered old gentleman at the bowls club.

From here, it’s a long drive through the Fens, and up the A52 – charmingly dubbed “a high-casualty route” by the council – to Skegness. It’s only Lincolnshire, but you know you’re in the north when the pepper turns white, Gordon Ramsay becomes Harry Ramsden and even the men call you “duck”.

Coming to Skeggy and not seeing Butlins’ original holiday camp (0870 145 0050, www.butlins.com) would be akin to visiting Cairo and skipping the pyramids. The vast resort, patrolled by ludicrously enthusiastic Redcoats, says as much about the British weather as the nation’s tastes: virtually every attraction is under cover, and if you needed confirmation that Britain’s got talent, check out the nightly spectacular at the Centre Stage theatre. And the beach? There’s a beach here? A few miles north, a reader, Sara Abbott, is playing house in her beach hut at Sandilands, which is Lincolnshire’s version of Southwold. The huts here cost upwards of £15,000 and come with a built-in social scene.

“Come back during the first week in August and it’s heaving,” says Abbott. “We have street parties, a tennis tournament and a big summer ball.” So there you go: you’re all invited.

Last stop for now is Cleethorpes, home to gag of the week. Sitting on the lower lip of the Humber, the town is served by a railway that drops visitors right on the three-mile prom. It’s cheap as chips, run-down but rather jolly, a beach full of laughing children and a back-drop of ocean-bound freighters.

Down at the pier, Lee Morgan is selling donkey rides, and I ask how long he has been doing it. He pauses before answering. “Donkeys’ years, mate,” he replies.

One man, his family and a campervan

I’ve got surfboards, sunscreen and swimming trunks. I’ve packed the windbreaks, the waterproofs and the wine cooler. I’ve loaded the Beach Boys on the i-pod, the beach toys in the boot and the Good Beach Guide in the glove box.

Outside, on a leafy London street, my gleaming Volkswagen California camper van is all ready to set off on the greatest assignment since Stanley set off to find Livingstone: a grand tour of England's coastline.

Progress has been cruel to our coast. It was the package holiday that killed the romance, offering the cheap allure of sultry foreign shores. But we stayed in touch, popping down for Kiss Me Quick Bank Holiday weekends until the likes of easyJet, Ryanair and wizz.com walloped that market.

Then foot and mouth and wave after wave of spiteful Atlantic weather marched in to mop up whatever was left. Piers collapsed. Seafront hotels closed down. Seaside attractions were boarded up. But it couldn’t last long. Psychologically all nations have destinations of desire – the places our subconscious takes us to when we close our eyes. For the Irish, it’s America.

For the Americans, it’s California. For the Germans, it’s Poland and Western Europe, and for the British it’s the seaside. The sound of seagulls, the smell of ozone and vinegar and the taste of a 99 run through the British soul like the letters in a stick of Brighton rock. You can keep your fancy Madeleines: if you’re a la recherche de temps perdu you need to hit the beach.

And the timing couldn’t be better: take one credit crunch, a fistful of fuel surcharges, a strong euro and a pinch of concern for the environment and you’ve got a recipe for the renaissance of the home-grown holiday. We’ve seen Florida, done Thailand, bought the Tuscan t-shirt and now, with one eye on the weather, we’re coming home.

The tide has finally turned for the English seaside, but can our coast really compete with the charm of Sharm, the glamour of the Greek Isles and the magnetism of Mallorca?

Let’s see. Starting at the end of June I’m setting off on a circumnavigation of the English coast looking for the seaside gems that sparkle brightest. Which are our top seaside towns and where are England's best beaches?

I’ll be seeking the supreme ice cream, the tackiest souvenirs and best battered fish. I’ll be looking for the best spots for that early morning swim, that long afternoon of languid loafing on the littoral and that last, fabulous, sunset surf.

The quest starts on the East Anglian coast on June 27, as I cover the ground between Southend-On-Sea and Hunstanton, with visits to Blackpool, Southport, Weston-super-Mare and Torquay

In the final week I’ll cover the south coast from Bournemouth to Whitstable. No matter what happens this summer, three things are guaranteed. One, it will be a scorcher. I know this because it says so in Old Moore’s Almanack and I’ll eat my Kiss Me Quick hat if it’s not.

Two, we'll discover the best the English seaside has to offer and three, it’s going to hurt to give Volkswagen their camper van back.