Winter Walking - a Stroll With Finn along Dunster Beach in the Lockdown

I shot this little video of a dog walk we did yesterday along Dunster Beach in this second lockdown

Many years ago I wrote the following article about Dunster Beach as part of a series called Sites of Special Sentimental Interest, for the Western Morning News…

The world of nostalgia is as vast as it is diverse – people flock to ride on steam trains, drive veteran cars, visit historic properties and generally soak up what now seem to be the golden sun-rays of yesteryear. But perhaps no journey down memory lane is quite as evocative, pungent and heady as one that takes you back to the highs and lows – the hi-de-hi’s – of long lost holidays.

Dunster Beach lies north of the village

It wasn’t that long ago that the concept of removing a family to some place for a week in search of a good time and a relaxing break was far less sophisticated than it is now. For folk who lived in the drab confines of urban streets, this meant finding a beach – probably because the coast, with its shifting tides and distant horizons, offers the antithesis of the cramped and unchanging world of suburbia. 

Once you’d found a suitable strand, all you needed was some kind of basic accommodation. For many, who couldn’t afford a hotel or a B&B, that meant the canvas shelter of a tent. But gradually people wanted a degree of permanence – somewhere they could return to time and again - and little communities of more substantial structures became established around Britain’s coasts. 

All you needed to do was find a willing landowner who realised he could pocket rent for what would otherwise be a useless bit of sand-dune – after that you required a hammer, a bag of nails, and some planks. 

And so the humble beach hut was born. Or “chalet” if you wanted to be posh. The working man’s holiday mansion, the blue-collar villa, the run of the mill family’s affordable embassy in heaven…

Oh how we’ve laughed at such things in the past couple of decades. Fancy spending your holiday in a cramped wooden hut when you could be in a Spanish hotel suite or in a village overlooking the Aegean - only very old-fashioned and unsophisticated folk would dream of spending precious vacation time in a draughty rain-soaked beach hut. Which is presumably why there are so very few left today. 

But things have changed. Suddenly beach huts are de rigueur again. Articles in this and other newspapers have spluttered with surprise as humble huts by the sea are put on sale for giant six figure sums.

Even little structures that don’t provide accommodation go for a fortune – here in the WestCountry we’ve seen beach huts where you can only change your trunks and perhaps make a cup of tea swap hands for £60,000… But find a place just feet from the Briney that sleeps four, has full en-suite facilities and a trendy fitted kitchen, and you are talking the price of a suburban bungalow.

One of the best known and most sought-after traditional beach hut communities left in the UK happens to be in the West Country, and it has been named as a Site of Special Sentimental Interest (SSSI) by a WMN reader who is eloquently passionate about the place and the memories it has given her.

Angela Sizer now lives just a couple of miles from Dunster Beach where her happy childhood memories are stacked like a library of books on a sunny sandy shelf, but she loves the place so much that last year she even hired one of its 230 beach huts (chalets is the term most owners prefer) for her annual holiday.

“My husband thought I was mad at first,” laughs Angela as we stroll along the two kilometre long lines of chalets at Dunster. “There was a television, but no phone – and he recharged his batteries and it brought back the childhood memories for me that I was able to tell him about. 

“Things like - no running water, you had to get it in a great big metal jug from the standpipe opposite. The milkman would come everyday and sound his horn, and the butcher would come twice a week and he’d ring a bell and everyone would queue up. You had to go over the road to the toilet. We loved it all.”

The beach is a mile removed from medieval Dunster village with its famous yarn market and castle. Situated beyond the West Somerset Railway out where the flat ex-marsh land meets the Bristol Channel, the site has two long lines of beach huts running south-north on a low sandbank just above the high water mark. 

The northern end terminates where the links of Minehead’s golf course being and on the far side of the 18 holes is the giant Butlins – an altogether different kind of holiday centre which has long since replaced its 1960s chalets. 

There are no white knuckle rides, amusement arcades, red coat entertainers, themed restaurants or multiple bar complexes at Dunster Beach. In fact there’s not much at all except for the beach huts, along with sea and sand, some trees, a lake with plenty of birds and what seems to be a great many rabbits. The only bow to the world of consumerism in which holiday makers are parted with cash is a well stocked shop which apparently serves an excellent cream tea. 

Compared to modern holiday complexes, Angela’s SSSI has an altogether happier feel of innocent times past.  The chalets are the classic traditional shape and are all painted regulation cream or green, but in a spectrum that ranges from light lime to dark olive. One or two don’t seem to have changed much since the first huts went up in 1934. What you get is what it basically says on the label: a hut. 

Some, though, are elaborate affairs with patios and timber decks, boasting en-suite everything you can think of. But such luxury is a relatively modern innovation… 

“I first came here when I was two,” says Angela. “We used to come with mum and dad - we’d come down by car (from Birmingham) and the luggage would follow on a train in a trunk and a taxi driver would bring it up.

“Dad would go off to Alcombe and get fresh veg’ and he’d sit outside and do the beans for mum. You’d talk, play safely. It was lovely. We came every year – we never went anywhere else. Happy memories…

“It’s a smell that you never forget,” she muses, recalling what it was like to first open the doors of a holiday chalet. “It’s not musty - and it’s not old – but you open the doors and you’ve got the sea and the sand…

“I wanted to write about my special place because it still gives you a fluttering in your tummy when you come here,” she sighs. “I came here last year with my husband Graham to give him a rest – a lot of the chalets you can rent - and it gets you away from everything. You hear the birds – it’s wonderful to hear the sea coming in - and watch the moon coming up over, if you’re lucky on a clear night.”

Walking past the community’s general store Angela recalled how hectic things were in high summer when she used to visit as a child: “It was so busy – people queued before the shop opened for their morning papers – and the sticky buns would arrive surrounded by wasps. There was also a post office further along with a smell of its own – we used to go there to buy the flags to put on the sandcastles and crayons and colouring books for rainy days.”

As with most memories, even the happiest can be tinged with sadness – and this is the case for Angela. “In 1970 we came down - I had two daughters and we’d had a wonderful holiday here. On the Sunday at home, my little girl was eating her breakfast and couldn’t get the food in her mouth – the doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong – they did x-rays and they said they were 90 per cent sure there was something wrong. 

“It turned out she had a tumour on her nervous system and she died in May of ‘71 – so then holidays stopped and we didn’t come for a long, long time…”

Angela fell silent for a moment as we continued our walk past the chalets among the lovely old trees that line the sandy site. To our left ducks quacked in the lake that used to be Dunster’s harbour back in the days when privateers were sailing in and out of the neighbouring Minehead and Watchet ports. 

Soon Angela was again recalling her own happy childhood memories, recalling the smell of the dairy cows wafting from the nearby farm, and the old lady who used to operate the level crossing. “She had a cottage right next to the railway and she’d come out to deal with the crossing – nowadays it’s all mechanised.”

Halfway along the lines of chalets we came across Angela’s old friends Pat and Glen Hulbert of Wootton Basset. “We bought this chalet in 1957,” Pat explained as she showed us around the small but cosy holiday home. “So we’ve had it for most of our married life and our children have come here and thoroughly enjoyed their holidays. And they now come down - our son comes with his son – and it is part of their lives.

“The next door chalet belonged to my brother-in-law – so we know people who’ve bought chalets due to having stayed in this chalet,” Pat went on, explaining that Dunster Beach is really a close-knit community that goes on generation after generation. 

“People come here as children, they come again when they’ve got children, and they come again as grandparents when those children have got children. You can’t help yourself. When you are in your teens you say: ‘Oh no - not Dunster beach’. But when you get past that you start coming again.

“We come four or five times a year,” she added. “We let the chalet out – when the children were small it meant we could keep our car and gave us a little income.

“It’s slightly different to what it used to be because so many chalets are let, but it hasn’t changed that much. We’ve got mod-cons in the chalet now: we’ve got toilets, we’ve got all the rest of it, colour television…  But years ago you had no water – you went to the standpipe and you had to go along to the toilets – but it was part of the holiday.”

As for the massive resale prices, Pat shrugged: “They sold one for £110,000 – but it was in very good nick, much more upmarket than ours.”

We left her with the impression that she and Glen were glad they hadn’t ever sold – especially not a few years back when chalets were swapping hands for just a few £1000. 

“I really do love it here,” said Angela as we continued our walk. “In 1980 I was lucky enough to move down here and I live on (Minehead’s) North Hill and so I can see Dunster Beach from my living room window. 

“But I shall always come back. In fact I’m going to suggest to Graham that we come and stay for more than week next year.”

Sidebar

The beach huts at Dunster Beach are on the sea side of what is now a landlocked lagoon. Called The Hawn, it used to be a busy harbour back in the days when Dunster was a much busier place, and as such it boasts much in the way of history and legend. 

A veritable pageant of fascinating people must have passed in and out of Dunster Haven, as it was known. Soldiers from Agincourt were called to serve the Mohun family who owned Dunster Castle; mediaeval masons were imported to build the huge church and priory; Benedictine monks filed silently past on their way to the village’s old Nunnery; Royalist and Parliamentarian soldiers would have come through on their way to lay siege to the fortress, and be besieged.

Even Charles II probably landed here when he was seeking refuge in the castle as a young prince. He didn't stay long. The 15 year old youth was brought to Dunster to escape the plague, but left quickly when it was discovered the villagers were dying of it themselves. 

The packmen who quartered the county with trains of horses, mules and donkeys - using the old pack-horse bridges like the one at Gallox on the other side of Dunster - would have picked up goods here. Perhaps they also exported the broadcloths known as Dunsters, having bought the goods at the village's famous Yarn Market. 

But it is the long lost mariners that I recall when visiting Dunster Beach. The only two facts I know about them is that some sailed in a ship called Leonard of Dunster, and that some carved their square-toed footprints in the soft lead roof at the church. Other than those marks and the land-locked Hawn, all trace of that entire maritime chapter of history has gone. 

Conygar Tower from Dunster Beach in the gloaming