Torquay: the seaside town that’s half Cannes, half shambles

“Just look at this, you could be in Cannes,” says Susie Colley, with a sweeping hand gesture that makes even her two West Highland terriers, Florence and Mitsy, gaze across Tor Bay.

It’s hard to disagree. The palm trees, the yachts, the shimmering sea lapping on golden shores, the manicured gardens, it certainly evokes the Cote d’Azur. 

“I love everything about this town,” says Colley, who’s having a day off from being Torquay Chamber of Commerce’s chair. “But only if you look this way. That way, not so much.” 

We turn to face the town and see Torquay’s boarded up Pavilion – a faded monument to better days – and in the distance the abandoned zoo, the ironically named Living Coast, now dead as a dodo. 

“There was an article in your paper,” says Colley, suddenly. Uh-oh. She’s talking about one that wasn’t very kind about Torquay. The one that ranked it one of the sorriest seaside towns in Britain. It wasn’t unfair, she admits. 

“I’m passionate about this place, but what grieves me is that people in town hall talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk,” she says. “They keep on coming out with ‘oh, this is going to be wonderful’ – well just do it then! Let’s see some progress.”

A town on the up

There’s little sign of it as I head further into town, passing empty shops, the faded Torquay Military Museum and Yates’s, where punters spill out onto the pavement and drink in the afternoon sun.

It really is a curious case, Torquay; a random mix of abandoned shops, chain stores, upmarket restaurants, contemporary art galleries, old pubs and chintzy cocktail bars, such as Soho, which smells like someone’s covering up body odour with Lynx Africa.  

The demographic is fascinating. There are chino-wearing pensioners, young couples window shopping outside estate agents, mums pushing buggies up hills, panting joggers, beefy bald blokes walking around with unsettling purpose, and the blue rinse brigade ambling back to sip sherry in faded hotels. 

Which I suppose brings us to Fawlty Towers. They’re remaking it, apparently to chronicle how haphazard Basil navigates the maddening modern world. Torquay, the famous setting for the original series (but not the remake, says Cleese), appears to be going through a similar process, an identity crisis of sorts, much like the rest of Britain.

I stop off at Offshore, a gastro pub overlooking the quay, for insider tips. “Don’t walk past River Island, or you’ll die,” advises Lynette, the loquacious bartender. She’s referring to the upper high street, ground zero in a town that has the dubious distinction of being Devon’s most anti-social. I had to go. 

But not before finishing my pint. Lynette reveals how she moved to Torquay from Stratford-upon-Avon because her grandmother dreamed of doing so but never did. “She left me the money to move here and live the life she wanted to. So, I did. I’ve never looked back.”

Despite appearances, Lynette reckons Torquay is on the up. “I’ve seen the change in the last year or so,” she says, citing new restaurant and bar openings as good omens. “We’re getting a better class of tourist [isn’t that what Basil always wanted?]. It sounds snobbish – I don’t mean it to be – but we really are.” 

The two favoured paths to seaside gentrification these days appear to be lined with hipsters and air-kissing urbanites with SUVs. Torquay appears to be courting the latter, hoping perhaps to capitalise on the middle-class exodus from big cities. The new luxury flats along the promenade, the yachts in the marina – they don’t belong to bearded baristas or sandal-wearing tech bros. 

You Cannes believe it 

Talk of Torquay’s plight frankly feels overblown. Sure, the high street is a shambles, but aren’t they all these days? And beyond River Island? A feeling of abandonment, yes, some homelessness and street drinking, but really not that bad. But then I’m from the West Midlands. 

I jump on an asthmatic bus to nearby Babbacombe, a timeworn village where those in the twilight years feast on cream teas and the past. The Queen Elizabeth cafe even offers old world prices – it’s an inflation (and gut) busting £4.95 for a fry up. This is old England, all rose-tinted nostalgia for times irretrievable. There’s a model village, a cliff railway, which has delivered passengers to the beach below for nearly a century (but is currently closed for repairs), and Bygones, an eclectic museum whose basement has been turned into a replica Victorian street with the kind of shops that you still see in modern day Babbacombe.  

I buy clotted cream fudge from one of them and get back on the bus, which wheezes around the hills to Torquay. The setting really is beautiful. The ‘English Riviera’ moniker feels apt. We wind through leafy hillside neighbourhoods, glimpsing the sea as we pass Georgian piles that have me scrolling Rightmove. 

I can see why Jamie Stewart moved his family down from Milton Keynes. “They love it here,” he says, making me a flat white from his coffee van on the sunny seafront. “We couldn’t have got the house we got here in Milton Keynes. Everyone seems happy, everyone is laid back. Mind you – if you want something done…” He shakes his head. It’s his way of saying it doesn’t get done. 

I walk up the hill and check in at the Heritage Hotel, which has a heritage feel, if the early 90s can be considered heritage. It’s £40 for a twin, which is cheaper than staying at home with the heating on. The bloke behind reception is friendly, but when I ask him for a restaurant recommendation his first suggestion is Wetherspoons. 

I go to Rockfish instead, a seafood restaurant overlooking the harbour. As far as I’m concerned, its fish and chips are reason enough to visit Torquay. Perhaps that’s the problem. Torquay United recently got relegated from the fifth tier of English football by Wrexham, a club bought by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. Star quality – it’s what Torquay lacks. A headline attraction. 

Nonetheless, as I look out of Rockfish’s window, at the yachts bobbing in the harbour, the ruined Pavilion sitting in a light that suits it (late dusk), three beers down, and a belly full of food, my mind wanders to Cannes; its pretty facade, its grubby underbelly. Perhaps the comparison isn’t so absurd after all. 

Have you visited Torquay? Please join the conversation in the comments below