(This is a pretty contemporary topic, almost a news story and the sort of thing I usually avoid: overcrowded tourist destinations, the havoc wrought by cruise ships and how to avoid all that.)
In Venice, published in 1960, James (later Jan) Morris described being on a vaporetto on the Grand Canal on a misty winter’s day and speculating that there were not half a dozen foreigners in the city. I suspect that it was an underestimate and certainly I was in Venice in summer shortly after that and it was heaving with tourists, many of them Americans carrying Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 Dollars a Day. But it is true that in those days there was a tourist season whereas now there will rarely if ever be a time when residents (much reduced in number to under 50,000) outnumber visitors during daylight hours.
And for Venice read Florence, Cambridge . . . indeed pretty well anywhere that had tourists then has them all the time and in profusion now. In Cambridge, teaching on a summer school there from 2002 to 2014 I had to learn to barge between photographer and subject because they were everywhere and I had a tight schedule teaching in King’s and the Union. In Florence in the Uffizi gallery recently I noted that every famous painting was surrounded by dozens of tourists who were not looking at it, but taking pictures. And, for that matter, read Whitby! In the 1980s I used to take my little twin brothers-in-law, who were twenty five years younger than me, on “mystery tours” which they claim invariably ended up in Whitby – though under pressure they admit that we sometimes went to Durham. We could park the car, saunter round the town, buy chips. Now they are having to work on the bridge over the river in Whitby because often it takes ten minutes to walk the fifty yards across it because the throng of tourist pedestrians is so great. And Venice is easily forgivable in this respect partly because it’s had tourists for centuries, but also because if you’re prepared to walk – or take the right vaporetto – you can still find quiet corners in Venice.
There were “unspoilt” places in those days – whole regions, in fact. We have always cherished quiet times in Northumberland and Puglia in the heel of Italy has had fewer tourists than it deserves, but both of these regions are visited far more than they used to be. Unlike Venice they still have quiet seasons: I reported earlier that when we went for a week in Northumberland in January there were only sixteen cars in the Lindisfarne car park on a beautiful day, but at the same time restaurants in the county were reporting that business in January was far from the living death that they had always assumed it would be.
A third category is the places that really don’t have tourists at all: Europe is full of interesting towns and rural areas where you can wander round a church or visit a gallery or climb a hill and be on your own. So I thought I’d assess the degree to which we have avoided the madding crowd in 2023. It’s a broad sample: we were on holiday six times in the year in six different countries. I suppose this can be seen as both a boast and a confession. We were somewhere between Covid and debility/senility and thought why not now? But so were millions of others of the same generation, often looking for the quiet times and the quiet places. Before recounting successes and failures it should be made clear that the crowd is not always madding: some places, many events need a crowd to be at their best. Others don’t: personally, I prefer a quiet art gallery and a quiet country walk, though I like a resort to be fairly busy. As for restaurants, we all know there’s a happy medium somewhere between deathly quiet and overstretched staff. Bearing in mind those rather complex and often subjective considerations here are my scores for the trips of 2023:
FRANCE, JANUARY – Val Cenis with overnight stops in Bourg-en-Bresse and Reims.
Madding avoidance score: 9
If you go to an unfashionable resort (unfashionable = “family” – apres-ski mostly consists of an early night) in mid-January when the Christmas/New Year holidaymakers have gone back to work and school and especially if you eat breakfast and ski through lunch there are no queues and you can have whole slopes to yourself. Of the restaurants we eat in I/we are extremely fond of Le Francais, the art deco chicken restaurant in Bourg, possibly the jolliest place in France on a Friday night.
SPAIN, APRIL – driving from the Santander ferry right across the country to La Manga Club where sixteen family members (belatedly) celebrated Ann’s birthday.
Madding avoidance score: 8
The ferry was busy, mostly with people who looked exactly like us, but the club was reasonably quiet. You could play tennis and golf at will, though at a price. The nearest city to La Manga, Cartagena (New Carthage), goes on that precious list of fascinating places that still have relatively few tourists. We had a couple of good days out there including a trip to watch the local football team beat Mirandes 1-0. On the way back Cuenca seemed generally crowded, but the meal of the year was in a restaurant there, a 14 item taster in Raff San Pedro. It was just pleasantly busy.
PORTUGAL, JUNE – staying at the pousada in Cascais and exploring the Lisbon area.
Madding avoidance score: 3
Perhaps, for once, insufficiently researched. Nobody told us that June is peak month in Lisbon, or that the city had appeared on several lists as offering the best value of any European city or that Americans, especially students, were heading out in post-Covid multitudes. Queues for everything so we only saw about half of what we intended. On the other hand the pousada itself was peaceful enough and we nearly always got a seat on the train.
ENGLAND, JULY – staying at Louth and Bourne in Lincolnshire.
Madding avoidance score: 9
I’ve written this up elsewhere. The summary is that there were crowds only where you would want there to be crowds – at the “Forties” event in Lincoln and at the excellent chip shop in Mabelthorpe.
I was originally inclined to give 10, but then remembered there was a queue for the Battle of Britain Museum which was too long for us to wait.
GREECE, SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER – a three week motoring tour of the mainland.
Madding avoidance score – 9
Credit to Ann for a brilliantly designed tour, starting and ending in Thessaloniki. I’d never heard of Edessa or Kastoria, for instance, but they’re lovely. We got right down to the Mani Peninsula at the other end of Greece. This is a tale of warm, calm seas to swim in, fresh and cheap local food and drink in restaurants and ancient sites explored at leisure. We spent four days on shufti antiquity and only in Delphi were there the sort of crowds you associate with famous places. Epidaurus was quiet, Olympia very quiet and Pella, Alexander the Great’s capital, was empty. I guess Delphi is the only one of those accessible from Athens or the cruise ships in Piraeus as a day trip.
ICELAND, November-December – exploring with car from a hotel in Reykjavik.
Madding avoidance score – 6
Forty years ago, apparently, tourists didn’t go to Iceland. Now, despite a smouldering volcano which had closed the famous Blue Lagoon, less than six hours of daylight and extremely high prices there seemed to be more tourists than residents in Reykjavik and you had to search for a seat at breakfast. Motoring faced us with the paradox of empty roads in an often desolate landscape, but when you arrived at a famous sight such as (the original) Geysir or the ancient meeting place on the fault line at Thingvellir there were dozens of coaches and hordes of people.
Gets up to 6, though, because there are some great places where the tours don’t go. There was only us at Skalholt, the religious capital of the country, though it is obvious that it sometimes hosts major religious and musical events. It is a lovely and slightly eerie place. We were more or less alone also in both the main collection and the recent acquisitions building of the Icelandic National Gallery. The latter was hit and miss, of course, but some real hits and it was good to be alone with them.
Lincoln Allison January 2024