Actor Tamsin Greig has been on our screens — and stages — for decades. Now, she’s appearing in Terence Rattigan’s 1950s play The Deep Blue Sea, but took time out to chat about her own experience of holidaying by the ocean, in the sleepy seaside town of Swanage.
Where is your favourite destination and why?
Swanage in Dorset. It was a destination that my husband’s family started visiting in the early 1990s, I think. Then we just carried on going there, renting the same house and staying for a couple of weeks every year with my husband’s family. It was a big old ramshackle house that sits on a cliff overlooking the sea. I think we visited that house for about 30 years and it’s just recently been sold, so our children are utterly devastated.
When was the last time you were there, and who were you with?
We still go back to visit Swanage once a year, but we don’t stay over. Instead we do a day trip, to make our own particular kind of pilgrimage.
What has been your favourite meal there?
As with all family holidays, there were always certain traditions. We would all go down to sit on the sea wall and get fish and chips from what is, I think, probably the best fish and chip shop in the world. It’s called The Fish Plaice and we’d eat them sitting on the wall, from the paper, with that lovely smell of masses of oil and vinegar. And if we didn’t do that, it was a ruined holiday. And there’s a little village just outside the town, called Worth Matravers, which in my opinion has the best afternoon tea shop in the country. Obviously, Cornwall and Devon would be very angry that I’ve said it exists in Dorset. But you can take your tea and go and eat it by a little duck pond in the village. It’s a really magical place and it’s all homemade scones and local Dorset cream.
What would you do if you had only 24 hours there?
So, on our annual pilgrimage, we get up very early and drive down and then drive through Swanage before most people are out and about. It’s a beautiful, quite old-fashioned English seaside town and it feels as though it’s just waking up.
And you can see the little fishermen’s boats off the beach. Then, if you climb up through Swanage and drive from there to Worth Matravers, you can park in the village and do this incredible coastal walk past Chapman’s Pool to a tiny Norman chapel that sits on the top of a cliff. On Sundays, during the summer, they have a tiny little church service by candlelight in the early evening next to where the RNLI lookout post is. So we would do that and then go back to Worth Matravers, have the cream tea, then go back through Swanage, have the fish and chips on the pier or the sea wall and then take a dip in the sea, if we can, at sunset. And then go home.
What is the one unmissable thing you recommend doing?
On Saturday nights for Swanage Carnival — which runs each year at the end of July and the start of August — they do a firework display over Swanage Bay. So, you could go and lie on the common, which is this big, open, beautifully green space that overlooks Swanage and out to the sea over to Old Harry Rocks. Sometimes the Red Arrows fly over. So you’d come and watch that and then later in the evening you’d have the fireworks.
Is there a hidden gem you are willing to share?
St Aldhelm’s Chapel, right on the cliff, which is so ancient. It feels like it’s dripping with souls and history and yearning from all the people sitting there and holding their hearts out. It’s a really beautiful place.
What are your favourite shops?
We’d go to this incredible chocolate shop which is in one of the little lanes at the back of the town. It’s called Chococo, and it’s all ethically sourced chocolate, locally made with these incredible designs. I used to spend an awful lot of money in there. And also Hayman’s Bakery, which is now called The Italian Bakery, on the main little road through Swanage. You’d walk down and get the bread for the day or the crusty cobs and the most extraordinary cakes.
Your packing essential?
I have this one jumper that I bought in the 1990s which is a very basic cotton, big jumper that I never wear in London. I only ever wear it on holiday. So that’s my Swanage jumper. I was doing a play in London once and there was a beach scene, in which my character needed to wear a loose jumper and baggy trousers. I said, “Look, I’ve got the perfect jumper.” But actually, the reason I wore it in the scene was because it’s got quite a wide neck and I had to watch Doon Mackichan doing a burlesque dance to shock everybody, which meant that I could just lift the collar of the jumper over my face as though I was in shock. But it was actually so that I could just wet myself laughing.
Is there a song that reminds you of the place?
We play music on the way down there and Tom Petty does this beautiful song called Time to Move On. It has got this really beautiful beat of, “We’re going now, we’re on the way,” for when we’d drive down and get the little chain ferry from Poole to Studland.
Your dress code for the destination?
You do have to bring all of your clothes, because you never know what the weather’s going to be like. So, lots of layers. Obviously shorts because it could be sweltering, but then also all of your jumpers because it could be miserable. You always have to bring a raincoat and a swimming costume. And a wetsuit. Just wear those three all the time and you’ll be fine.
Tamsin Greig is starring in The Deep Blue Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket; trh.co.uk
As told to Vicky Jessop
