A postcard from the British seaside town where Covid snobs aren't welcome
Perhaps Margate’s chequered past has made it humbler than other British beach towns
There’s never been a British summer like the summer of 2020, and every British resort town and beauty spot has been on quite the emotional (and financial) rollercoaster. Since lockdown began in March, I’ve barely strayed from my adopted hometown of Margate, a classic cheap-and-cheerful, bucket-and-spade seaside town in Kent.
And during these past few weeks, with lockdown restrictions easing and travel back on the cards, I’ve been proud of the good grace with which Margate has welcomed visitors from all backgrounds, and with all budgets.
With travel journalism feeling a bit shaky right now, I’ve got a fun new weekend job at a tiki bar on the beach. (Which, let’s face it, is the closest I’ll get to a Hawaiian holiday in 2020.) Most visitors are respectable of our lengthy new list of rules, listening patiently as I explain the one-way system to the bar, the strict six-to-a-table rule, and point out the sanitising stations dotted around alongside the succulents.
Most customers are just pretty delighted to be out of their living rooms and sipping a pina colada in the sunshine. And this is something that hospitality workers appreciate. It’s not exactly natural for bartenders, restauranteurs and proprietors – who have made it their business to welcome, to accommodate requirements, and to put the customer’s whims first – to suddenly have to turn people away and remain unflexible on numbers and seating arrangements.
Some customers seem to feel like being on holiday also means being on holiday from the pandemic, with social distancing rules back in their flat in London. But I’ve had far more customers saying they appreciate these new rules and procedures, which make them feel safe and able to relax after months of stress, isolation, boredom and fear.
So perhaps the summer of 2020 will see a slight reframing of the definition of customer service. Hospitality is no longer about putting one individual customer first; it’s about caring for the collective, staff and all customers - while making sure the business survives.
I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the local residents bemoaning the overcrowded streets of Padstow, the busy walking trails of the Lake District and litter-strewn beaches of Devon. We have our problems here in Margate too. Our carparks, public toilets and litter bins are woefully inadequate for a mid-pandemic heatwave in the school holidays.
It’s impossible to get a booking at my favourite restaurants; bad timing, because I’m pretty bored of my lockdown roster of soups. Hastily listed new Airbnbs are starting to dominate our residential streets, driving up the rent for longterm residents, and ultimately contributing to a ghost-town vibe – with major implications for local businesses – in the winter months.
And these past weekends, the litter left on Margate’s Main Sands has been quite a shock; a local group of volunteers, Rise Up, Clean Up Margate, has organised community beach clean-up these past three weeks, to keep beaches remotely enjoyable.
But even so, I’ve seen very little of the snobbery, selfishness and nimbyism exhibited by other UK destinations. And I’ve spent the past few weeks marvelling at this, and feeling prouder of my town than ever before. After all, litter can be cleaned up. But a welcoming and hospitable spirit? This is what really makes a holiday town beautiful.
As one of the closest beach resorts to London, with coach and rail routes that has made it popular with daytrippers for over a century, Margate is no stranger to crowds. Queen Victoria holidayed here (staying at Albion House in neighbouring Ramsgate for three months in 1835) but she would have shared the beaches with factory and mill workers.
This wasn’t always harmonious; the affluent holidaymakers and aristocrats opposed the opening of Margate Sands Railway Station in 1847 because they felt it would ‘cheapen’ the town. But for much of the past two centuries, Margate has welcomed – and relied upon – visitors of all backgrounds and budgets.
We have top-notch, mid-price restaurants like New Street Bistro, Barletta, Angela’s, Dory’s, Bottega Caruso and Hantverk and Found. We also have Peter’s Fish Factory and the Dalby Cafe. We have fabulous hotels like the grand Walpole Bay Hotel, the design-led Reading Rooms and stylish pub-with-rooms The George and Heart. But we also have a Premier Inn right next to the station.
We have ridiculously cool shops I can’t really afford to buy stuff in, like Haeckels, Werkhaus and Ruskin. But we also have cheap-and-cheerful rock shops along the seafront where you can buy a crabbing net for £1. And for every Brooklyn-esque yoga studio like HotPod Yoga or Union, we have an escape room or penny arcade. So even though Margate is frequently classy, Margate is never snobby.
Perhaps Margate’s chequered past – with a giddy Victorian heyday and steep 20th-century decline – has made my town more resilient than most, a bit humbler than other British beach towns, that pride themselves purely on being ‘arty’, ‘foodie’ and ‘exclusive’.
Margate was one of Britain’s most popular seaside towns throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, when figures like Charles Dickens, JW Turner and TS Eliot would linger for entire summers. But during the 1970s and 1980s, the boom of cheap package holidays abroad and poor planning decisions brought the town into a steep economic decline.
Today, it’s having a resurgence, but Margate will never take the boom days for granted. And in April, May and June, vital months for the hospitality trade in a seasonal town, Margate missed its visitors again.
So even on a heatwave weekend like this one, it would be churlish to complain about the crowds. Margate has seen the opposite of overcrowding, after all, and that was worse.
