Hotmao

Recent media coverage of Cornwall would suggest that far from being one of Britain’s top beach destinations, it is some sort of lawless Badlands where the locals are mired in poverty and the holidaymakers and developers just walk on by like Neapolitan sunbathers. 

Commentators have been brightening up Cornwall’s summer tourist trade with talk of the local, feral children who have to be locked indoors at sunset, or the surfers who will beat you up Point Break-style if you tread on their turf. Or that infamous town, Redruth, with its burnt out buildings and the sinister nickname, Beirut.

Hmmmmmmm. As a Cornishman I am always a little proud when our far-flung county makes the national news but at least get it half right. Yes Cornwall is very poor, according to the EU it is the poorest county in the UK and one of the poorest parts of Europe. The ubiquitous engine houses which mark the former tin mines can be seen as the last fossils of the industrial age which left Cornwall a century ago, a time when the county saw more migration to the new world per head then even Ireland.

But Cornwall isn’t quite dead yet. The tourist trade which used to rely on the old coastal enclaves of Rock and St. Mawes is booming and not only thanks to the big names like the Eden Project or Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant.

Places that 10 years ago were literally health hazards such as Porthtowan, a beach which became so polluted local surfers started going deaf and the EU had to pay to clean it up, are now packed. Go down to the Blue Bar, or the Sand Bar at Praa Sands and even in the off-season there are still racks of BMWs accompanied by their poseur City boys pretending to be surfers. Even the notorious suicide spot, Hell’s Mouth, has got a delightful little cafe which does brilliant crab sandwiches. 

Yes there are the predictable whines that this is all on the coast and scratch a little below the surface and Cornwall will be revealed as the industrial wasteland it is. There is certainly truth in this if you look at parts of Camborne where there are housing estates which resemble a pebble-dashed vision of hell. Villages such as St Day have also had problems with travellers and violent children, one story suggested a gang of six year olds were attacking patrons of the local pub. But this picture of the interior of Cornwall is equally false.

St Day has sorted out its problems with the travellers. New shops are opening in the village, young professionals are moving in to take the advantage of the easy access to Truro, and the village has an excellent local school. The old parish church, which was previously desecrated by thugs, has just been restored to splendour courtesy of local charities.

Likewise in Camborne, charities such as the Cornwall Community Foundation are putting a huge amount of effort in to the local community with one member suggesting that Camborne has more volunteers per head then anywhere else in England, while pointing out that there is no barrier between the town and Cornwall’s beautiful coastline.

Redruth, the poster boy for wild and violent Cornwall, may not have the prettiest high street but to label it Beirut as the Sun did last month because of a few boarded up windows and one building which has not replaced the damage from an accidental fire is rather far fetched. Also the fact that the town now enjoys a curfew may be seen more as a result of the local policing style rather then a problem which no other community in the UK faces. Certainly when I was involved in a fracas outside the Twilight Zone nightclub in Redruth one officer suggested the safest course of action was to run away as he had no intention of confronting anyone. 

Yes Cornwall has its problems, as would be expected of any area where the local industry has been bled dry over the course of a century. However it is turning a corner. This week the Boardmasters event in Newquay will attract hundreds of thousands of young people to the area to see some of the world’s finest musicians and surfers perform. Towns such as Falmouth are seeing year round regeneration thanks to the university attracting some of the brightest journalism and art students (so much in fact that Exeter University is now basing some of its courses in the Falmouth campus). Thanks to a combination of excellent work by local charities, clever entrepreneurship and the physicality of the county itself, Cornwall is looking pretty splendid.