I am currently in Cornwall where I am spending the last week of August with my family. I cannot claim to have been basking in sunshine — the weather here is no better than the rest of the country — but I am luxuriating in the warm glow that comes from being on an environmentally friendly holiday. As I make my way towards Fifteen, Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Watergate Bay, I exchange approving nods with the other dads. I had no idea that saving the planet could produce such a powerful sense of wellbeing.
Admittedly, this feeling is quite hard to sustain once I have returned to the car park. I have borrowed a VW Caravelle for the week and while it is diesel-powered and does a respectable number of miles to the gallon, it is the size of a horsebox. I have two excuses for this. The first is that it is a thousand times more convenient than any other so-called people carrier. In addition to my wife, I have four children and a nanny and trying to shoehorn all of us into my Vauxhall Zafira, which laughably bills itself as a ‘seven-seater’, reminds me of that episode of The Record Breakers in which Roy Castle tried to squeeze several dozen people into a Mini. In America, I hired a Kia Sedona, but even that, which Hertz insisted on calling a ‘mini van’, was too small. Of all the people carriers I have driven, the Caravelle is the only one that can accommodate three adults and four children in comfort, with room for our luggage in the boot.
My second excuse is that offered by up by Colin Brazier in his recent article for Civitas about the social and economic benefits of large families. He dismissed the environmentalist case against over-population by pointing out that while large families use up more resources in total than smaller ones, their carbon footprint ‘per capita’ is actually lower. On that basis, my Caravelle should enjoy the same tax exemptions as a Toyota Prius.
Like many of the middle-class families holidaying in Cornwall at the moment, I have been on another holiday this year — an excursion that required all seven of us to fly to America. Nevertheless, I do not allow this to impinge on my feeling of moral superiority. This may be absurd, but logical consistency has never been a hallmark of the green movement. Being an environmentalist, like being Catholic, is compatible with a limitless degree of hypocrisy. At least I flew on a commercial airline — unlike Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Prince Charles, who regularly fly around the world on private jets.
A moment’s reflection would reveal just how absurd it is that Cornwall has become the holiday destination of choice for those wishing to advertise their green credentials. Surely, if the Camerons really cared about saving the planet, they would take their children somewhere nearer home, such as the Midlands. It took me seven hours to drive to St Ives, whereas it only takes two to get to Birmingham. It is typical of the greens’ twisted logic that Cornwall, one of the most far-flung parts of the UK, has become an ‘environmentally correct’ place to go on holiday. However, a trip to Roskilly’s, the most fashionable ice cream manufacturer in the county, quickly puts paid to any such doubts. At the Roskilly’s farm just outside Coverack, children can stroke the different animals roaming freely in the fields, while adults can visit the ‘organic herb shop’ to stock up on oregano and coriander. In the farm shop, alongside the local produce, environmentally conscious consumers can buy Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage ice cream — ‘Cream, eggs, sugar and nothing else’, boasts the label. Looking around at the trendy, middle-class parents and their blond children dressed in stripey T-shirts, I feel a bit like Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show. Only instead of a middle-American suburb, I am trapped in the Boden catalogue.
Perhaps I am being unfair and the reason Cornwall is popular with parents of my age is because flying anywhere with small children is a nightmare. It certainly has a plethora of beautiful beaches and, viewed from the terrace of Olga Polizzi’s hotel in St Maw’s, the coastline is spectacular. But I have an awful feeling that these assets will not be sufficient to sustain the boom. Within a few years, London’s fashion-conscious environmentalists will have settled on a new place to take their families. My money is on John O’Groats.
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