In Weston-super-Mare

What passes — I hope! — for travel writing on a budget of £5

It takes me some time – well, all day really – to reconcile this place that seems at once abandoned and, yet, today, humming with vigorous commerce; it is visibly atrophied in parts – but it’s also hosting thousands of Easter-weekend day-trippers from across the country. I hear Welsh accents and Midlands twangs – and I’m unable to discern the local accent at all. I am, inevitably, meeting Weston-super-Mare the destination, rather than the hometown.

Leaving the station, a notebook, and a packet of peanuts for sustenance in my satchel, I see a petrol station and not much else. But a signpost gestures towards The Italian Gardens (which sounds beguiling but – it turns out – is neither a garden nor discernibly Italian), as well as The Grand Pier.

Towards what I take to be the centre of town, I come across an incongruous 30-metre spire – the Silica, I later learn – a creation of the pleasingly named Wolfgang Buttress. It seems to jut out of nowhere, and serves as a bus stop and kiosk, as well as an extraordinary sculpture in its own right. (At night, it illuminates the drab street it emerges from with thousands of lights).

In need of caffeine, I spot a Costa housed in An Art Deco building, a genuinely striking structure. But the interior takes no cues from its grand carapace – it’s been gutted and looks like, well… a Costa coffee shop. This is something of a theme in Weston: Poundland, Miss Millie’s and a shop called Fone Zone (closed) squat under beautiful Bath Stone flats.

Arriving at the pier, I approach the kitschy entrance and go through the gates (there’s a £1 entry fee – and, as it happens, I have the change), passing an impossibly crude Doritos-branded nachos stall. The uneven wooden planks seem older than the 2010 restoration – necessitated by an enormous fire in 2008 – would suggest.

It’s not until I’m about halfway along the jetty that I properly inspect my surroundings: The view is truly expansive – but washed out, the colours muted by some combination of the Spring sunlight, the matte shade of the beach and the flatness of the sea.

A large hump of rock – an island, really, or a great sea monster’s fin – seems to bob in the distance beyond the pier’s reach. And I wonder if anyone has ever visited it. Perhaps someone lives there? From this distance, it’s impossible to gauge its topography but I like the idea that it’s inhabited, however improbable.

Inexorably, and against my wishes, I enter the arcade: a chaotic, epileptic, jarringly luminous and claustrophobic geometric cavern – each game or ride packed so closely together that it’s hard to navigate, even alone. My anxiety medication meets its match and is roundly trounced. A banner on the escalator informs (or rather, warns): “this way for more thrills” but I demur.

The pavilion itself is an unconvincing tribute to the eviscerated Moderne structure; neither a faithful simulacrum, nor an attempt at anything distinctly modern or stylish. It already looks dated – like a shopping centre with a vague nautical theme. This pier is actually one of two in Weston; Birnbeck Pier can be seen from the walkway of its more celebrated and functional twin, but its last visitors left in 1994 and never returned. I find its quiet dilapidation oddly moving.

My stock of peanuts depleted, I search for somewhere to have lunch. The Stage Door and The Albert Inn, modern gastro pubs you might find in London, seem like good options but they’re both closed; ditto Tasty Bites Pizza House; and a multi-purpose venue with the name Somewhere To Go, ironically, shows no sign of life.

Fireaway – home to a dubious innovation, “Nutella Pizza” – doesn’t appeal, so I settle for an unremarkable chicken salad at the Duke of Oxford, before going to see The Tropicana: the site of Banksy’s huge installation – and ironic attraction – Dismaland Bemusement Park, that appeared on the seafront in 2015. When it opened, he told The Guardian it was inspired by “the failed winter wonderlands they build every December that get shut down by trading standards – where they charge £20 to look at some Alsatians with antlers taped to their heads towing a sleigh made from a skip.”

Heading back to the station, the temperature dropping and my sojourn in Weston at an end, I can’t help thinking that this place is misunderstood – or, rather, doesn’t quite know what it is in 2023. It’s neither the “shit hole” some Bristolians describe; but nor is it one of those seaside towns – Margate, Whitstable – that’s managed to rebrand itself as a quirky but tranquil place to spend a weekend.

Its time for rejuvenation will come, I’m sure. But for now, it’s really just The Grand Pier, some eye-catching architecture swamped by tired shops, and home to Broadway Lodge, a rehab.