Summer Sample

          During last week’s heatwave, we were travelling what felt like the length and breadth of England – from South Devon to Lancashire, Wiltshire and West Sussex – and, while we have friends in the USA for whom these distances add up to no more than a daily commute, for us it was an almost epic journey. As for our ageing campervan, it proved a few miles too many. The motor lost power whilst climbing a single carriageway on a hill outside Salisbury and the following traffic was obliged to match our crawl until we pulled into a layby on the descent. The resentment was somehow palpable.

          Waiting for the AA to provide roadside assistance, I had a flashback to my youth when, on hot summer days especially, roadsides were littered with broken-down vehicles, often with their bonnets up and clouds of steam rising from their overheated engines. The frequency of such incidents has diminished since we learned from Japanese carmakers how to build resilience into mechanics, but other vestiges of summer holidays in England circa 1960 remain, to be relished or rejected according to taste. In Lancashire, we stayed briefly at the seaside resort of Southport, the genteel cousin of Blackpool. Both have been impoverished by the competition – foreign holidays – yet they cling to what they can of their former glories. Southport once had a high street famed for its jewellers and furriers but the elegant shopfronts, with their curved glass windows, now showcase everyday commodities like coffee, trainers and Polish groceries. In Sussex we visited Bognor Regis which on first acquaintance appears to be to Brighton what Blackpool is to Southport – a cheaper and more vulgar alternative – yet such faded charm as it still possessed was being lapped up by determined, holidaying families. The big question for seaside resorts is what future do they face? The enforced staycation boom has boosted their fortunes, but will customers fly abroad again as soon as it is permitted?

          Elsewhere, in the Sussex hinterland, adaptation is the name of the game. We were invited to the wedding of our friends’ daughter, which was held in a former farmyard barn complex, now converted into a dedicated wedding venue. The repurposing of these ancient buildings is a way of preserving, not just structures, but also the heritage that lingers within them and rubs off, I hope, on all the wedding parties, thereby perpetuating the sense of a collective history. OK, it’s no longer a barn, but the spirits of Thomas Hardy-esque characters still linger in the oak frames. Likewise, the country pub, where, the following day, our generous hosts treated us to lunch. The Duke of Cumberland Arms was once a modest village watering hole, hidden away in a tangle of lanes off the A286, but nowadays it can claim to be a ‘destination’ pub-cum restaurant. Yet it cannily retains its old-fashioned rural charms, while catering to the needs of a widely drawn clientele of diverse and sophisticated tastes. The transition was commercially driven, of course, yet we are all winners in the process. We have a public house that would otherwise have been turned into a private residence and I am inclined to agree with Hillaire Beloc’s sentiment, “when you have lost your inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.”

          In conversation, our friend (the bride’s father) told me that his knowledge of England is limited to a handful of places outside of where he lives and works and that this is because he has always holidayed abroad. Staycationing has awakened his curiosity, though whether it will change his habits is another matter. In response, I say that an English summer has its allure, come rain or shine: heritage trumps mere weather.