Saturday, July 14, 2007

St Ives Revisited

Subsequent to my slagging the other week, St Ives in Cornwall has now been named Britain's best seaside town by a Guardian panel of experts. Broadstairs, a depressing town of which I have many unhappy memories from childhood visits, came second.

The panel of experts included Bill Bryson, Rick Stein, Esther Freud, Blake Morrison and Alan Carr. Andrew Martin, Alastair Sawday, Martin Parr, Kathryn Ferry, Candida Lycett Green, Kate Ashbrook, Paul Gogarty, Kevin Gould, Ian Jack, Andrew Kotting, Adam Nicolson, Phyllis Starkey, Jonathan Glancey and Jonathan Jones also lent their expertise to the project.

12 comments:

  1. The list of experts started well but went downhill. After the first one.

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  2. Anonymous9:01 AM

    Doesn't Bill Bryson have a beard?

    I've never been to St. Ives, because I could never be arsed to drive that far, but I went to Broadstairs once, and had one of the most depressing afternoons of my life.

    As any fule no, Britain's best seaside town is Les Sables d'Olonne, on the Atlantic coast of France.

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  3. Mark my words Geoff - they'll all come round to your way of thinking in the end.

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  4. Murph - The experts went downhill for The Guardian's Best European Ski Resort supplement in the winter.

    Bob - I think Britain's coast has a lot to offer (when the weather's decent) but I hate all this nostalgia for crap childhood days at the seaside. Shitty, mushy sandwiches, greasy spoon cafes, inhaling cigarette smoke on the beach and stepping on dog ends in the sand, horrible sweets and bloody stickes of rock!

    Kaz - I'm happy for them to go to Broadstairs while we go to Deal.

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  5. No! Not another list I'll have to Google because of my simple Canadian ways! (except BB)

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  6. I only know about half of them.

    Alan Carr is a crap comedian who looks like the one with the teeth out of the Banana Splits and sounds like Sue Pollard from Hi De Hi.

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  7. *Googles Sue Pollard*

    See what I mean?

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  8. Should be "Goggles" Sue Pollard.

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  9. Candida Lycett Green went to my school and was Head Girl. Goody two shoes.

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  10. I thought she was one of the Two Fat Ladies.

    Why didn't we have a Head Boy?

    'snot fair.

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  11. I think she is John Betjeman's daughter.

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  12. She is, I wikied her, Romo.

    Born in Slough.

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