A newspaper columnist and author has slammed Cornwall as a holiday destination, labelling it "overcrowded, overpriced and uncharming" after queuing for chips for a staggering two hours.
Caitlin Moran is a regular visitor to Watergate Bay in Cornwall, and has written in the past about her love for the beautiful and popular tourist destination.
But during a holiday taken as "the contractual obligation of the British middle classes in summer" Caitlin was shocked by just how busy the place had become, CornwallLive reports.
Cornwall has been rising in popularity as a tourist destination for years now, featuring in a number of popular TV programmes such as 'Doc Martin', which was filmed in fishing village Port Isaac.
And with covid rules still affecting international travel, many Brits have instead turned to Cornwall to find somewhere to get away to over the summer months.
Moran took to her Times column to argue that despite the huge contribution tourism makes to the Cornish economy, many Cornish people are "angry" at its popularity as a holiday destination.
"They’re priced out of home towns that are ghostly empty in winter and chaotically rammed with dawdling gawkers in high season," she said.
"Despite Britain being full of incredibly beautiful countryside – the Welsh Marches; Cumbria; Ayrshire; a place I once went to near Stafford – Cornwall is a disproportionately fashionable place to holiday, and so demand madly outstrips supply.
"We’ve all seen the news story about one Cornish holiday home being advertised for £71,000 a week. We’ve all seen the rammed beaches and booked-out cafés. We all know how badly it affects the people who live in places warped by mass tourism. We know they’d actually like roughly half of us to just f*** off. And yet we still go."
This is not something unique to Cornwall, as Moran identified. It happens all across the world. And this tendency to place a handful of beautiful places on the world's 'bucket-list' ultimately "makes them overcrowded, overpriced and uncharming", she says.
Caitlin gave up on the chips in the end and went to cook them at home. She concluded by suggesting museums across the world should be raided, artefacts repatriated to their original locations and a whole new 'bucket list' of places to visit would be created.
Instead, what Cornwall really needs is a boost to its shoulder season, either side of the summer holidays, and winter tourism, as VisitCornwall chief executive Malcolm Bell identified in his Sustainable Tourism Strategy earlier in the year.
And for tourists to seek out the less popular places - where you don't have to queue for two hours for chips.
