Newquay 0 Tavistock 5

- Cameron Carter 

As the North Cornwall branch line train turns a bend, a row of pylons appears through the mist like the snow-blind survivors of an Arctic expedition, tethered to each other for safety. A horse stands long and still in damp pasture. White stone houses materialise, teetering on the abrupt drop to the Atlantic. You can tell you are in Newquay by the proliferation of hotels, fish and chip shops, unsavoury-looking bars and insular groups of eight-to-ten young people having fun at an inappropriate time of day.

The town is named, prosaically, after a new quay that was built in the 15th century and was a modest enough sort of place until the arrival of passenger trains in the 1870s, surfing in the 1960s and stag and hen nights in the 1980s. The place is now a byword for a particularly straightforward type of pleasure, the kind that can easily be caught on camera. There is probably another side to Newquay, a ghetto area with a gentleman’s tailor and a flat above a vegetarian cafe where a book club meets, but it will be effortlessly overlooked by the day-tripper.

As the road climbs away from the sea to the Mount Wise stadium, the majority of signs in the windows of the guest houses state “No Vacancies” even in March. With childhood memories that link steep terraced streets of bay-windowed houses to the magic of the seaside, some visitors will take the final steps towards the football ground beset by a combination of giddy expectation and maudlin nostalgia.