Torquay on its knees.

Torquay. It is a seaside resort on the south coast of Devon. It is a town I know reasonably well. I spent two years doing my A levels at South Devon College on Newton Road. They were a good two years. They may have been my favourite two years of existence. I remember them fondly. I lived not more than 9 miles from Torquay until the age of 25. Yeah, I was familiar with the town.

We spent a day over in Torquay today just perusing, browsing. The children had been taken to the cinema by their Nanny. We had free time and so we headed to Torquay.

Torquay in my day was a very vibrant place. It was an ambitious and growing town. Having spent the day in the place today I can see that this, perhaps, is no longer the case.

When I was younger, Brixham was very much the poorer relation to Torquay (and for that matter, Paignton). There wasn’t much in the way of shops or things to do. Anything like that involved a trip to Torquay. Brixham did have a Woolworths. This was pretty much the main trip with pocket money on a Saturday. When I was young, Brixham seemed very much like a waiting room for God. All the shops were aimed at older people, Pensioners, etc.

Torquay, however, had the shops and the pubs and clubs. It had the best nightclubs in the bay. It was where people on a Friday and Saturday night went.

Now, though, nearly 20 years later and a fair few years’ worth of visits I notice the change over time. Brixham, the perennial fishing town has changed socially over the years. Tourism has come to utterly dominate the town. Pretty much every shop in town now has a business in it. This was not always the case. It used to be the case that Torquay had full shop fronts and Brixham, depressed by the economy, had a lot of vacant shops and no-one wanted to fill them. Again, this now seems to have changed.

Torquay today had quite a few shops that were vacant or were full but the quality of the business inside them was questionable. Cheap discount stores have taken over the companies that dominated the high street but have now gone. They sit next to a variety of charity shops, coffee shops and food shops. The majority based in tatty, unappealing, shop frontages. Only the big high street chains have spent money on looking welcoming.

Torquay has become cheap, but worse, it now looks cheap, too. That’s the unforgiveable aspect. It has been badly managed politically and economically over the last 20 years and the results are now being seen.

Brixham, from a lower point has risen and it has come at a cost. Its community has become smaller (arguably, more close knit). It took its time but the town has begun the process to full gentrification. A proliferation of coffee houses was the first sign. In the height of summer you do not need to travel more than 10 metres to have access to another coffee from another coffee shop. It is amazing. Yet now they have begun adding artisan shops and posher coffee shops. The infrastructure hasn’t altered much but the components have been altered a lot since I left Brixham.