Let the words "popular seaside town" stand as a warning. I bet they say that about Southend. In the context of seaside towns, "popular" means that the town has a Butlins, or would dearly like to. For those unaware of what Butlins is, it`s perhaps the nearest thing the Brits have to Disneyland, though depressingly somehow much worse. Whilst Disneyland has months upon end of glorious sunshine and a selection of tasteful themed rides for kids and adults alike in a tastful landscaped garden surrounding, a Butlins venue (for sadly, reader, they are many) is situated on some British excuse for a beach and as the rain passes overhead they alternate between Guess My Brother`s Surname competitions (during the day, for the kiddies) and Beer-Forfeit Fancy Dress Karakoe (in the evening, for the parents). Watchet doesn`t have a Butlins, but its next door neighbour Minehead does, and I bet the Watchites are furiously jealous. All they have is a seafront promenade with an ice cream stall and a couple of gruesome pubs. The sort of pubs that feature white tables, battered faux-leather chairs, TV on Emmerdale with the sound off, more fruit machines than a Las Vegas Wal-Mart and are so brightly lit you think you might have stepped into an interrogation room.
We did have one pint in Watchet. In order to get into the spirit of things, we entered their version of a raffle which involved writing your name in one of a hundred or so numbered boxes on a large piece of paper. As they started the draw, we eyed up the prizes and had a sinking feeling that the small pile of Things We Probably Ought Not To Have Brought was going to have a large faded orange teddy bear added to it. Fortunately not! The large teddy bear was won by someone who looked to me like a twelve-year-old, but as she was smoking she was clearly at least fourteen. She was just about to walk off with the bear when the gentleman drawing the box-numbers out of a hat pointed out that there was some sort of "be sick on vodka jellies" kit that was still to be claimed as a prize, and convinced her to take that instead. We didn`t win anything at all, fortunately.
The caravan site at Watchet was actually rather nice - apart from some (ptooey) St*tic Caravans it had about ten pitches for tourers, all on the top of a very nice bay and pointed directly out to sea. We elected to take the very end pitch (mostly because I didn`t want to have to back the caravan in in full view of two sets of twitching lace curtains), at the end nearest to the entrance. The problem with this was that as we backed in, we stopped all the traffic trying to get out of the site. In the eventuality, this was only one car, and he waited very patiently as we backed up onto some chocks in order to level it, and unhitched. It all went quite smoothly actually, so he didn`t have to wait long. As he drove past, he said "obviously not novices!" out of the window, which made my little heart swell with pride. We`re practically pros! We`re in the club!
The next morning we drove (unhitched, and leaving the caravan) as fast as we could out of Watchet, past Minehead (and past the rather spectacular Dunster Castle, which casts a regal presence gazing out to sea over the Minehead chapter of Butlins) and on down the coast towards Devon. We thought we were staying in Devon, actually, until we realised from the signposts that it was in Somerset. Anyway, we were attracted to North Devon mostly by the "25% gradient" and "unsuitable for caravans" markings on the map, and the road did indeed turn out to be both steep and pretty much unsuitable for caravans. It led us up and down to a town called Lynmouth - a fantastically attractive little village, though a little touristey. Its main theme appeared to be the fact that thirty two of its inhabitants had been killed in a devastating river flood during the 1950s, which they were milking as much as possible. Along with the "Flood Museum" and the "Awesome Power of Water Exhibition" (I`m not joking, unfortunately), I half expected to see the "put your swimming trunks on and ride along the murderous path of the flood on an authentic floating recreation of a pensioner". The flood museum, like a lot of these such places, was unfortunately very detailed on minutiae but a bit scant on what actually happened. As far as I could work out, the two rivers that converged inside the village flooded at pretty much the same time, washed away a large number of the buildings and severely damaged many others. Unfortunately, though, the museum itself had far more pictures of Price Philip (who visited them shortly after the disaster, and again fifty years later) than it had diagrams of where the water went, so I might be barking up the wrong tree. Our parking was running out, so I didn`t have time to investigate further.