UK weather
'Busy as Notting Hill carnival': Botany Bay residents bemoan packed Kent cove
Large groups of day-trippers ignore social distancing on hot bank holiday weekend
by Helen PiddA beach on the south coast has been “as busy as Notting Hill carnival” over the bank holiday weekend, with local residents saying a “rave” took place on Sunday night, as tourist hotspots across the UK reported a rise in visitors.
Residents of Botany Bay in Kent complain that their cove – popular for its rock pools, spectacular chalk stacks and clean swimming water – has been overrun by large groups of people ignoring social distancing and drinking, partying and defecating on the beach, with some camping overnight.
Across England, some tourism hotspots struggled to cope with demand from visitors as temperatures reached 26C in parts of the country on bank holiday Monday.
In the Peak District, park authorities said most car parks were full by late morning, with residents of Edale worrying that emergency vehicles would be unable to pass car-filled lines.
The Peak District mountain rescue organisation said its teams had been busy. “During the lockdown we have been averaging between four or five callouts per week. However, in the last week we have been contacted for assistance on 13 occasions. These have included rescues of walkers, climbers and bikers as well as searches for vulnerable persons and lost hillwalkers,” the organisation said on Facebook.
In Wales – where lockdown rules are tighter than in England and sunbathing and picnicking in public remain banned – police set up roadblocks to turn away day-trippers from across the border. “We must reemphasise the message of the Welsh government and the first minister of Wales: please visit Wales later. Now is not the time,” said a spokesperson for Gwent police.
Some English coastal resorts remained quieter than usual, such as Blackpool, which has rebranded its tourism body Do Not Visit Blackpool during the lockdown. Others were overrun with visitors, such as Botany Bay on the Isle of Thanet in Kent.
There, the community group Friends of Botany Bay and Kingsgate complained their small resort was gridlocked by noon on Monday.
“Here, lockdown is over,” said Barry Manners from the group, who on Monday morning said he caught a woman defecating on the road outside his seafront property. “She dropped her bikini bottoms and crouched down as her husband stood next to her smoking a cigarette,” he said, complaining that so many visitors had used the beach as a toilet that the sand was totally contaminated. The beach was “busier than any of us can ever remember”, he said.
Alan Munns, another local resident, said he had spoken to police who were called to a “rave” on the beach on Sunday evening: “Last night there was a party on the beach, like a little rave going on. There were 30 or 40 people there.” Half a dozen people camped on the beach afterwards, he said.
“They bring down a sound system and light a fire,” said Manners. “Normally when this happens what people are concerned about is the volume of music at 1am but now there’s the added thing of social distancing, and this Dominic Cummings thing. We have tens of thousands of people totally ignoring it and disrupting a lot of people in the process.”
But Manners said the problems really began when Boris Johnson relaxed lockdown in England a fortnight ago, saying people could drive as far as they wanted to get exercise.
“The gloves came off on this the moment Boris announced you could travel to beauty spots, that was it. The next sunny day was chaos down there. We had all these furloughed workers spending the day on the beach,” he said. No one seemed to have taken any heed of the small print about exercise, he complained. “They’re definitely not coming to Botany Bay to exercise. There are children building sand castles and big groups of 20- and 30-year-olds have picnics and BBQs.”
Manners said the lockdown was now impossible to police. “There has to be a level of enforcement that is impossible. It’s like Notting Hill carnival crowds, basically. So what are you doing to do, send out the whole of the Kent constabulary to police some beaches? I don’t think it’s practical. I don’t want to get political but what can I say? Lockdown is not working.”