Although it is rated as one of the worst seaside towns in the UK, I have lived in Weston Supermare for three years and there is one thing tourists probably don't know.
Little Somerset Resort has gone down a bit of recent luck and consumer magazines? Weston rated it as the eighth seaside town in the UK. This is better than Bottom, Bangor in Bangor, Capitol in Nigel Farage, Bognaregis like Clacton-on-Sea.
Weston has all the traps of the classic British Kiss Quick Beach Resort. It boasts two miles long seaside, the world's second-highest tide range, donkey rides, about a million chippies, ice cream parlours and, of course, the Grand Pier, most famous for being rebuilt years after being burned out by a massive fire. There is also a Weatherspoon pub and a Premier Inn.
Another claim to fame is Banksy. The famous graffiti artist is from Bristol, but as a child, he spent his vacation in Weston, some Banksy artwork has appeared in town over the years. Most famously, the thousands of people crammed into Weston that month to help Banksy blow his “brooding” theme park into Weston Super Mare and boost the local economy of the disease.
I headed to Weston Super Mare as a fresh 21 year old desperate to make my mark in journalism and got my first job as a local newspaper reporter with a title called Weston, Wahle and Somerset Mercury. No one gets insider knowledge about places faster than covering it for a newspaper. I have been sent to everything from Cider Festival and the Parish Council to Banksy sightings and beachfront tragedy.
Weston Super Mare was, in my time, three-quarters of the year. Even in 2011, High Street was merely a charity shop, cafe and pensioner. Nightclubs were drugs and dim, and we regularly saw battles flowing out of Cardiff and the wild Stagdos on the streets outside.
And in other quarters, they were roaming completely around every road, scattering every inch of the beach, and plunging in with day trippers that blocked all the parking spaces throughout the town.
Despite this monotonous explanation, there was a moment. T4 On The Beach came to Weston-Super-Mare in 2012, like adding star power to Rita Ora and this hard-up seaside town. And the 2015 Banksy's tragic exhibition was a wonderful, dystopian take at Disneyland. And the locals are very proud of their town. Honestly, compared to some streets where reporters walked through my hometown of Sheffield, I told me more devastated residential areas people told me in my time “ravaged”.
But one thing tourists need to know about Weston is its hidden gem. This is a small area with its own beaches, away from the proper ones at Weston Supermare.
The town is a quaint photo of a postcard that boasts a small beach, one small play park, two pubs and a cafe. It also hosts the annual scarecrow festival, making it the perfect definition of “hidden gem.” In fact, the parish, which was thought to have been before 1066, was a popular “recovery” destination in the 1700s. Its sea air and coastal beauty is prescribed as something prescribed by medical professionals.
No matter how choking I was, and the Weston Super Mare in the Brock was full, I always enjoyed escaping to this unknown seaside slice just a few miles south. So, 300 years later, for those who feel tired of Weston Supermare in the 18th century, it still does the same job.
