Blue Moon's trip around the UK

I had never been to Padstow but now I have, and I can see the attraction. The Camel estuary is beautiful, the sands are wide and clean and would be an amazing holiday spot when not wrecking unwary yachts, and the town itself is a pleasant little fishing place.

That was then, but this is now. This is Pad-post-Stein. I really don’t blame him for what’s happened to his home town (I hope it is his home town?), after all he only went and opened a good restaurant and appeared on the telly a bit. And surely it was popular before him, I know people who’ve been going to Rock for Ages (see what I did there?).

It’s the onslaught of SouthWestification that has followed that has done for the town. You can buy entire wardrobes from White Face and Fat Stuff and Regatta and Crew and the rest, and then a nicer one in a half a dozen boutiques that could do seaside chic in Hampstead, but you can’t buy fresh veg anywhere. The Spar (the only food shop that isn’t a pastie bakery or ridiculous deli) made Hugh Town’s Co-op look like Waitrose. And then there must be two dozen restaurants or cafés, in addition to the two owned by Our Rick. I looked in the window of No6 by Paul Ainsworth because I’d heard of him, and the only menu was nine courses for £145 per person. That is not a typo. Two people would pay £290 to have dinner there if they only drank tap water and left no tip. £145! I have been lucky enough to eat in some pretty decent restaurants but I have never, ever seen a menu for £145.

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Having done yet more boat-mending jobs in the morning I treated myself to a pasty in the cockpit, which was an interesting experience. I’ve never done this harbour wall thing before where people come and look at your boat, and I don’t like it. Because you are 12 feet down they seem to think you are not there and they can peer at you and talk about you, but you can hear every word very clearly. So I found out a bit about the demographics and lifestyle of the average Padstow visitor.

From mid morning to precisely 2.30pm you have the elderly crowd who have come by coach, mainly it would appear from the West Midlands. The coaches all seem to leave at 2.30pm and this is itself a topic of conversation, and of ongoing concern, along with various medical conditions which could render the return to the coach urgent. The phrase I heard the most though, I kid you not, was “look at all the boats”, as if the presence of boats in a well-known harbour was a source of surprise. Which I suppose it could be if you’re basing your expectation on Dudley Port which is mainly full of offices and retail complexes. My two contenders for best and most representative statements though, delivered straight at me while I was eating, were:

“Oh no, I can’t eat a pasty, they’re a challenge to my bowels. I brought a small salad with me.”

And

“They don’t seem to make bags big enough for her bladder”

So it was a relief when 2.30 came and with it the coaches, when they were replaced by what I can best describe as the DFL-preschool crowd. This group cemented ‘look at all the boats’ as no 1 phrase but for more understandable reasons, but unfortunately it also came with phrases like ‘look at the little one with the windmill’ and ‘look there’s a man on the boat. What’s he doing do you think?’. This group had bought all their clothes in the aforementioned surf/sea chains, and acted as if they owned the place, which they may have done. Top statement (true, I promise):

“He really didn’t want a 4×4 but she insisted: it’s for the kids”.

And finally, and more surprisingly, what appeared to be a works outing of several blokes and a woman who went on about office politics for ages and them loudly Face Timed her (not pre-school) kids and went through the whole school day right into my cockpit. They were even posher than the DFLs and dressed entirely in Barbour. They were gearing up for a big night out and a couple of the blokes were (they informed me, but without meaning to) lining their stomachs with fish and chips. “Where did you get them?” asked the woman. “Stein’s” they replied. “And are they any good?”. “The best I have ever had”.  

Because by then I hated them so much I so nearly went and spent £20 on a burger in a silly burger and fish grill shack. But I was in Padstow, and I had to go. So I trudged over and ordered on an app and stood in a queue and was eventually served haddock, chips and mushy peas for a tenth of the price of nine courses at no 6, and damn Barbour man, they were indeed by far the best I have ever had.

These trees are on the road back from the Doom Bar. I expect Mark Fishwick came this way.