In the weeks before I went to Sidmouth there were various portents. First, I saw my great-uncle and he told me he had just come back from there. ‘Our hotel was like Fawlty Towers,’ he said, happily, adding, ‘You know, John Betjeman wrote a poem about Sidmouth.’
Then I bumped into my friend’s dad at dinner. He’d just spent a weekend on the Jurassic Coast and had visited ‘the nicest town in East Devon’. ‘Was it Sidmouth?’ I asked. ‘It was!’ he replied. He recommended a café on the beach that had good coffee cake. Also, did I know that John Betjeman wrote a poem about it?
This year, the ONS said that Sidmouth had the highest proportion of nonagenarians in Britain. Of the town’s 5,300-or-so population, 319 people are 90 or older. (That’s six per cent, the national average is 0.9 per cent.) The largest age demographic in the area is 60- to 80-year-olds (39 per cent) and the number of people younger than 30 is 842 (16 per cent).
I am not 90; I am 28. So, the purpose of my visit was to see how I found Sidmouth as a young person. In brief: could I have a good night out in the town The Times and The Telegraph have called ‘God’s waiting room’?
My boyfriend (who is also not 90 but 33, to be clear) and I arrive in Sidmouth on a Friday morning. We unpack our bags and walk to the seafront, past the local croquet court. It’s populated with a few players – in their 70s, I’d say – dressed in neat white kit. You can see the ocean in the background. (When I ask anyone who seems 70-plus – the woman volunteering in the museum, the man picking up his order at the bookshop – what they like about Sidmouth, they all mention the ‘sea air’. That, and the general pleasantness.)
Sidmouth by day
On the high street, bunting skips between roofs; a bakery named Flapjackery sells gourmet flapjacks; outside a boutique called Forever England, floor-length nightgowns hang on a clothes rail, drifting a little in the wind. I search ‘vape shop’ on Google Maps – my litmus test for seeing how ‘young’ an area is – and learn that, in Sidmouth, the nearest establishment the internet thinks might sell vapes is Waitrose.
All of the shops are let, bar one: a knackered corner building with a sign advertising ‘YRGOLF: 2 state of the art golf simulators and relaxing lounge bar’. Apparently, it’s coming ‘early 2025!’ This is now summer.
I ask a woman working in a nearby bakery what the YRGOLF building used to be and she says Carinas Nite Club, the only one in Sidmouth, which shut in 2018. She leads me outside it. ‘You can’t tell, but it was massive. Tardis-like. There would be hundreds of people inside and queues outside.’ A friend of hers, who works in another shop on the street, joins us. ‘We’re talking about Carinas,’ says the baker. The newcomer looks at YRGOLF, sighing. ‘We had a lot of fun in Carinas.’
They’re in their 40s and say they wouldn’t go clubbing now anyway. When I ask what young people do for a night out in today’s Sidmouth they both reply: ‘Go to Exeter.’ It’s a different, logistical sort of evening. There are buses to Exeter but they leave hourly and the last one is at 11.40pm. The alternative is a £50 taxi.
On a council cork board, I see a leaflet for Sidmouth Sea Fest. There isn’t much information, only that it’s a two-day festival in Connaught Gardens – a public park at the top of a hill. It takes place – and this wasn’t planned – on the weekend we are here. I consider this a promising coincidence and decide to go. I don’t really know what I expect: maybe a man playing gentle guitar, possibly some morris dancing.
Sidmouth by night
As we walk uphill, past big houses and one of the town’s 11 care homes, we start to hear music. It’s not folky but, rather, electronic and dancey. My boyfriend turns to me, confused. ‘It sounds like we’re in Ibiza.’ The noise gets louder until we enter Connaught Gardens and arrive at the festival.
It is, basically, a different planet. The flower beds are illuminated by technicoloured lights; large papier-mâché jellyfish dangle from trees. At the back of the gardens is a stage with a DJ. Around the perimeter, stalls sell food and drink. And in the middle there are loads and loads and loads of young people.
We get pints and watch the crowd singing to a remix of Dirty Cash (Money Talks). I panic briefly that maybe this oasis of Gen Zers isn’t local. Maybe they’re free-spirited types from Exeter who have come for the night. I approach one, wearing a gigantic scrunchie and a low-waisted denim skirt. ‘Are you from Sidmouth?’ I ask. ‘Yeah,’ she replies, pointing to a group of her friends. ‘We all are!’
She introduces me to the festival’s organisers, Louise, Coco and Tara, locals in their 40s and 50s who run Sidmouth School of Art, a charity that encourages creativity in the area. They started the festival in 2014 and the whole thing is non-profit. This is, really, the one weekend a year Sidmouth is like this. But look – they nod to all the 20-somethings – there are plenty of young people here, they just need things to do and places to go. ‘Now,’ they say, ‘if you’ll excuse us, we need to hang up some jellyfish!’
We order more beers and join the dancing, shouting about how surreal this is. At 10pm, because of the council’s stipulations, the music ends – but the night isn’t done. We follow crowds down the hill and to the sea, along the high street, past Flapjackery and Forever England and the houses full of sleeping people. Everyone stops at a pub called The Black Horse.
Inside, it’s rammed, with Gen Zers and a karaoke machine and a boy giving a genuinely brilliant performance of Don’t Look Back In Anger. When he finishes, a group of at least 15 girls sing That Don’t Impress Me Much. My boyfriend and I do a committed duet of She’s The One. After, at the bar, I look at all these young people and think about how they’re all having such a good time, and how no one will want the pub to close at 12, and how we would all absolutely love it if the nightclub down the road still existed.
Earlier that evening at Sea Fest, we had stood at a viewing platform where you could see the cliffs and coast. After a while a boy appeared, young – obviously – and I think drunk and happy. He asked if we were from the area and we said no. He wasn’t either, but his uni friend’s mum helped organise the festival so he’d come to support. He was from and lived in Manchester. Then – and I promise I am not making this up – he gestured to where the music was playing, then to the sea and the cliffs, and he said, quite sincerely, ‘but, honestly, I wish I lived in Sidmouth’.
