TOWN & OUT
Our picturesque seaside town is being ruined by tourists – they’re making our lives hell & we want them to stay away
FURIOUS homeowners have slammed tourists for turning their picturesque seaside town into a living "nightmare".
Residents of summer hotspot St Ives, Cornwall, have had enough of holidaymakers swarming their idyllic coastline.
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Each year more visitors arrive, bringing with them traffic chaos, noise and litter, according to fuming locals.
One fed-up resident, Andrew Ward, told the : “The locals can’t even move their own cars and the traffic gets horrendous.
"You only need to look at the chaos by Truro.
“The whole of this end of Cornwall around Hale and down to Penzance can be a real nightmare with queuing traffic.
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“We need the tourists, that’s the only problem, a lot of the locals would prefer fewer tourists."
And Andrew's opinions were shared by many others who vented on TripAdvisor.
A disappointed visitor penned: "Hideous, overcrowded, noisy, covered in litter.
"Why would anyone with any sense want to go to this place which is hell on earth?
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“Crowded, noisy, nothing to eat but bad fish and chips and Cornish pasties, and the beach packed full of the morbidly obese, screaming sunburnt children in buggies and people with tattoos."
Another scathing review read: "The beach is stunning but forget it if you’re trying to park.
"The parking in St Ives is beyond anything I have ever seen before.
"The parking hasn’t been updated in years and it is completely unpleasant where we couldn’t park to even get on the beach."
"We won’t be returning to St Ives ever as we couldn’t get a parking spot despite driving round for hours and no beach is worth the epic stress-levels as a result."
One scathing local told of their hellish experience when the summer season begins.
"I love this beach having lived in St Ives for three years, but when the season gets underway with tourists it turns into my worst nightmare", they wrote.
"The tourists are rude and drop litter, of course not all of them, but enough of them to make it a nightmare the beach is so crowded and the sea too."
Local RNLI lifeguard, Stefan Harkon explained the tourism issue is forcing the younger generation out of St Ives and putting their seaside town at risk.
He said: "At times, people in the town feel that they are just operatives in a theme park.
"We work in an area but we can’t live in it. We need quality jobs and more affordable housing."
The lifeguard added that the local community is suffering from a "brain drain" as younger residents move away.
Camilla Dixon, co-founder of the First Not Second Homes campaign, also highlighted the issue of greedy tourists snapping up second homes and driving up property prices.
She said: "We have a town where the rich people come to on holiday when in some parts of St Ives more than a third of children live below the breadline."
It comes as hundreds of UK holiday hot-spots experience the same trouble.
Elsewhere in Cornwall, residents of Mousehole, an idyllic staycation spot, have to leave town to buy everyday essentials.
Rising visitor numbers has wreaked havoc on the property market as houses are snatched up by tourists for holiday homes.
Meanwhile, in Padstow, North Cornwall, glorious golden beaches and picturesque countryside are a hit with tourists - but now its popularity is wreaking havoc with residents.
The disheartened community are so up-in-arms about the worsening housing situation and claim greedy tourists are "overburdening the system".
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And, families in a Yorkshire seaside 'ghost town' also say they are being forced out and torn apart by holiday home owners.
The residents of Robin Hood’s Bay, are facing a major housing crisis as demand for accommodation and second homes has driven house prices sky high.
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