Requiem for a holiday resort: Torbay 2011.

Well there you have it, another dismal summer weather-wise and a body blow for our battered tourist industry. Do you know, although doubtless some dysfunctional statistician will find the exception, the last really hot month was April 2007. Now I mean hot rather than warm, the sort of heat that has you horizontal in no time at all and not the occasion warm day.

Of course poor weather makes any holiday location dismal and as singer song writer Chris de Burgh wisely said, “There is nothing quite so sad as a holiday resort in the rain.”

But it is more than that. Getting back to the basics is essential and that has to start with whether we here in Torbay really want a tourist industry! Notice the word Torbay. At one time it was simply a case of three towns; Torquay, Paignton and Brixham (soon to become Tesco-By-The-Sea!). That morphed into Torbay and was marketed under the English Riviera banner.

That lasted for a while before being re-branded as simple the English Riviera. Even the English Riviera Centre became the RICC (I’ll leave you to add the words). During that time we had the traditional running battle between assorted hoteliers, attraction owners and others, which really wasn’t helpful. That’s the trouble with clutching at straws.

This year the re-branding boys and girls have been at it again! Yes, we’re back on track with the name English Riviera / Agatha’s Riviera with a newly commissioned (commissioning is seen by some as a little like the proverbial washing of hands) tourist company. That got off to a publicity hungry start but soon bumped into the new mayor and talk of amalgamation between the board and the conference centre (RICC).

Now whilst we are crashing about the questioned has to be asked about the welcome for visitors. Take Paignton harbour as an example. We seem to have an increasing proliferation of prohibition notices, parking restrictions and now the possible idiotic advent of parking meters. I guess what I am getting at is the curious landscape of one sector of the council saying come and have a good time other departments work against that.

For many local businesses this winter will really be a time of seeing darkness at the end of the tunnel and if we are really to make a difference that there is a real and urgent need to get the whole town on board as to what Torbay/ the English Riviera/ Agatha’s Riviera is all about. That requires something more than unhelpful rhetoric and political infighting.

The thing is that unless we wake up and decide whether we want a tourist economy, in these hard economic times, then it is going to slip away whilst we sleepwalk into terminal decline. Let’s stop the dreaming and get on with the here and now. We need to celebrate what we have and either use it or lose it.

The photograph was taken on August Ban Holiday Monday 2011

frank sobey

The Rising Coastline...

You probably will not hear about it on the local news and indeed if you happen to be standing on the South Devon Coast the fact that the land is an inch or so higher will, I doubt, have caught your attention. Yet it is a fact and so here is the hard evidence.

You see it is simply the absence of the combined weight of people and cars! On Saturday as I drove back after a morning at Harbour Sports Exeter the queuing traffic heading out of Devon was stunning. Where the A30 meets the M5 long lines of steaming cars tailed back toward Okehampton and static traffic clogged both Telegraph and Haldon Hill. Heading down the Kingskerwell Road at 40mph, passing slow moving vehicles solidly heading out of the English Riviera. Now you will understand why the land is a little higher!

YET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today Torbay has coast to coast sailing because this weekend is the combined Torbay Regatta sailing event and craft of all shapes and sizes compete in the various races. The water is flat and already numerous sit on kayaks explore the coastline discovering little coves that cannot be reached from the shore.

Harbour Sports Plymouth is buzzing as the Barbican springs into life greeting tourists and yachtsmen from all over the world. The spectacular news is that after a tediously damaging summer Wales and West Utilities have at last up sticks and the BARBICAN IS ONCE AGAIN FULLY OPEN TO TRAFFIC. Amen to that…..

This is an interesting time at Harbour Sports Exeter because the huge influx of students has yet to arrive and there is a curious quietness about the town. Sunday is a good time for us because many shops are closed and so we have become a destination hot spot. We have a good reputation for action sports that range from longboard skates to longboard surfboards.
So it’s time to drag yourself from the television and endless cyber surfing. Get up, get out and live the life.

Frank Sobey

Plymouth Road Rage in video

You might have already read the bit below about the annoying traffic situation in Plymouth and around the Barbican specifically. Well the rant continues, but this time in video and if you have a smart phone then scan the QR code and take a look. If you don't have a smart phone simply follow the http:// below the QR code.......frank

Summer on the English Riviera

The English Riviera at 11am on Sunday the 31st August as viewed from Paignton Harbour! It’s the very height of summer but where are the tourists, where are the boating people, the swimmers, the children splashing around on the beaches? I hear the constant institutional rhetoric about the boom in tourism, the anticipated thousands home holidaying families and here is the evidence. This beautiful harbour, this stunning coastline, this lovely bay, these miles of open beaches and coastal walks….and yet?

What I find a little curious; well more than a little curious is the gap between what is said and what is actually happening. You can print whatever you like but unless you capture the hearts and minds very little will change. Too much of what we hear is about what we will do rather than what we are doing. Harnessing new information technology rather than printing endless brochures might be a good start. But hey, what do I know? What I do know is the gap between myth and reality.

The biggest factor, of course, is weather and after five poor summers in a row that isn’t too hard to understand. Yet last week, the first of the school summer holidays, the weather was warm and sunny but the beaches were quiet. The second huge factor is the reality of a local welcome. Take this harbour as an example where the proliferation of notices telling folk what they can’t do has become endemic. New fences now solve a problem that we never had and the road surface is covered with white, yellow and red lines! The master mariner harbour masters of a former time would spin in their watery graves. Added to that is the cost of parking and I am still the lonely advocate of first hour free parking.

He travels on……simply wanted to say that the water is fine so come and play…….frank

Black comedy and comic farce…………………….Plymouth Summer 2011

You really would be hard pressed to write a script that had major roads in a city closed or restricted for long periods of time, but in Plymouth we have produced a demonic comedy or epic proportions. It started with the closing of Gadynia Way, the eastern arterial route into Plymouth, over a year ago. Since then we have had a proliferation of traffic cones, massive traffic queues, neighbourhoods shattered by new rat runs as motorists become suicidal attempting to get in and out of the city, diversions and goodness knows what else.

This dysfunctional landscape is with us still offering little hope of a reprieve in the immediate future.

Showing the strategic reasoning of a small child on Christmas Day, Plymouth then allowed a utility company to dig thumping great trenches on the eastern approaches, closing road after road! This, it seems, is essential work to provide us with natural gas for the next sixty years. It is nice to know that those lovely Russian businessmen will be pumping the stuff into Plymouth for years to come.

As I say, you couldn’t make it up.

Now consider this. We employ highly paid local government executives to think strategically, to promote Plymouth as a tourist attraction and to encourage business. But for many visitors this would be their one and only visit to Plymouth having spent pointless hours queuing whilst listening to meaningless traffic reports on the radio.

Perhaps Plymouth’s best known tourist hot spot is the historic Barbican, where I have a shop on the Parade. Yesterday I eventually managed to drive there after queuing, nipping down various side streets and pausing to read the road closed/access only signs. The Barbican, on this hot sunny afternoon, was almost empty. The numerous eateries had a far too many empty seats with staff staring into space and wondering whether, for them, the outcome would be a P45. Hopeless.

But like the proverbial frog we all seem to be being gently heated until we become so lethargic we simply sink beneath the troubled economic waters having been beaten to death by institutional stupidity.

Frank Sobey

SUMMERTIME - WHEN THE LIVING IS EASY

Well here we are at the start of the school summer holidays, the sun is high in the clear blue sky and a warm wind is blowing over the ocean. This is the time for getting out there and living the life. Drag yourself away from the computer, leave the safety of the television and get out on the water. There is no age limit, so sexual bias, no religious requirement and open to all ethnic groups. You can do whatever you want from messing around on a boogie board to scrambling in and out of the sea coasteering!

Perhaps the most popular activity at the moment is kayaking on a sit on kayak! Super safe and so easy to use. Traditional kayaks tend to have you balancing like a pea on a a knife with your legs inside the kayak. But a sit on kayak has you sitting on top with your legs tanning in the afternoon sun. How good is that? Whether you seek the open sea of quiet hidden creeks, a sit on kayak will bring you hours and hours of fun.

Kayaks are available on managers special deals in all our shops and if you are in Paignton we actually hire them from the shop at low low prices. For a single kayak it is only £25 a day and for a double it is only £40! Now that has to be fantastic value.

Come and play...............................

Open Roads

Our last blog was a bit of a rant about the gridlock around Plymouth's Barbican and the fact that to get to HARBOUR SPORTS PLYMOUTH was almost impossible. For us it was another case of 'who cares about the little guys' as a huge utility company crunched through Plymouth. Added to the chaos that has been rampant for the past year on Gadynia Way (the bit just after the Embankment) we were feeling unloved. You do have to question Plymouth Council's strategic planning perhaps.

Anyway last Sunday Frank popped down to the Barbican for a BBC Spotlight interview with Simon Alexander. That went out at teatime and again in the late evening. The following morning folk from the utility company called to see Andy Partridge (our Plymouth manager) to say all would be well.......................AND IT IS.

THE BARBICAN IS UP AND RUNNING and the way to HARBOUR SPORTS PLYMOUTH IS CLEAR........

All a coincidence probably but the outcome is lovely....

frank