My sister had vowed never to go back. Our magical memories of childhood summer holidays in north Devon were too beloved to be spoilt by commercialisation, over-crowding, and two decades of change.
On the other hand, I had always longed to revisit the scene of seventies disco-dancing competitions and sand-dune snogs, rock pools and summer-long friendships forged under canvas. And why bother dipping a toe in the water of nostalgia when you could hurl yourself off a cliff into it? So I enlisted my lifelong partner in crime, Lisa, and signed up for an action-packed weekend of surfing and coasteering, thinking that jumping off 30ft promontories sounded like a perfect grown-up girls' weekend away.
Remembrance of things past
As 28 years have passed since my first visit to Devon, I decided that a comfortable mattress, rather than a camp bed, might be in order. So we checked in to the Woolacombe Bay Hotel - and booked a couple of massages for good measure.
Four and a half hours after leaving Brighton, the brow of a hill dropped away to reveal the hotel's red-brick sprawl dominating the central sweep of coastline below, its immaculate lawns spreading, uninterrupted, to Woolacombe's three-mile stretch of sandy, blue flag beach. From our four-poster beds we could blissfully survey the whole matchless panorama: the National Trust-owned Baggy Point rising to the left and the steep terraces of the town's Edwardian villas stacked on the cliffs to the right, with Lundy Island shimmering in between out to sea.
To my relief, I discovered that Woolacombe has not changed. The beach was packed with families and surfers but the town, with its handful of shops selling tourist trinkets and surf gear, felt far from overrun. We sat on the lawns with a delicious pasty apiece from Fudgie's Bake House, and took in the utter, glorious Englishness of the scene, before dozing off on the beach in the sun. By the evening, rested and relaxed, we already had that full-on holiday feeling, despite being just hours into a three-day weekend.
Overly excited by the novelty of the hotel's dinner dress code, we got dolled up and swished down for pre-dinner cocktails in the bar. What a mistake! On a sunny summer's evening, the curtains were closed, an abundance of fleshy pink leather sofas went un-sat upon, and there was no music or atmosphere of any kind. We ended up taking our drinks out onto the lawn instead, slightly upset that a hotel with the most fantastic of views has a basement bar stuck in the eighties.
Still, we drank in the sunset along with our gin fizz and looked forward to our five-course dinner, blissfully unaware that it would be a disaster from beginning to premature end after an inch-long piece of wooden skewer found its way undetected into my mouth.
Our high holiday spirits deflated, we decided to seek solace in the Red Barn pub. Packed with surfer dudes and dudettes, there was atmosphere in abundance there and, several pints of cider later, we were having a whale of a time.
Rock pools for adults
At 9am the next morning, as we climbed into wetsuits and donned buoyancy aids and crash helmets for our coasteering session at Croyde Bay's Baggy Point, the excesses of the Red Barn didn't seem so clever. And when 14 blokes on a stag weekend turned up, dread set in.
Coasteering is a kind of extreme form of rock-pooling: a three-hour, up-close-and-personal exploration of the coastline veering from terrific fun to plain terrifying. Involving clambering over rocks, jumping off cliffs and getting buffeted around by the sea in between, it is exhausting, exhilarating and a fantastic team-bonding exercise. Before long we were honorary stags, cajoling and being cajoled into leaping off rocks and helping to drag each other out of the swell.
The high point was swimming through a fantastically beautiful blue cave underneath one of Baggy Point's many notable rock-climbing routes, into the cove where, as a 10-year-old, I had spotted a seal. The low point, meanwhile, was being repeatedly torn off barnacle-covered rocks by the powerful suck of a wave, fingertips shredding in the process. Frustratingly, the most difficult manoeuvre of the trip - a nail-bitingly exposed, vertical rock climb - came at the end, when we were all dog-tired. Without the aid of harnesses, it proved too much for one guy.
If you are scared of heights or you aren't a strong swimmer, do tell the instructors from Breathing Space, who tailor the level of difficulty to the group: families, friends or corporate colleagues. But adventurous types will relish this unique way of exploring the coast, and may even find out what makes them tick. I certainly did: faced with repeated dashing against the rocks, all I could think of was a nice cup of tea.
Before leaving Croyde Bay, we took a turn around the Ruda campsite, where I spent eight years' worth of factory fortnights. From the top field we munched another of Fudgies' pasties, gulped down a flask of longed-for tea and stared out over the pristine, unspoiled beauty. And I rang my sister to assure her that Croyde Bay's memories remained untarnished.
Steam, sleep and surf
Back at the Woolacombe Bay Hotel, we made grateful use of the steam room, sauna and Jacuzzi to soothe our barnacle-induced bumps and bruises. But we spurned the hotel restaurant in favour of the brilliant Beachcomber cafe, from whose windows, hovering above the sand, you can look down the whole length of the beach and watch the evening surfers in the sunset.
Fresh out of the night's veggie option, the chef cooked us up huge dishes of delicious pasta served by a guy dressed as a pirate, which is an absolute winner in my book. With a drinks list that included Weston's organic cider and a soundtrack of laid-back reggae and blues, it is a peach of a place. Next on the itinerary would have been the Marisco Disco - cheesy but fun, by all accounts - but we were just too tired to check it out, passing out at an embarrassingly early hour after our long day.
Sunday morning began with a two-hour surfing lesson, which was such excellent fun we forgot our aching muscles and shredded hands.
Our fellow wave-riders at Nick Thorn's surf academy, on the slipway to Woolacombe beach, ranged in age from 10 to 50-ish. Despite the brevity of the session, all the kids looked like professionals by the end, while we were just happy to have almost managed to stand up. We were both hooked, though: north Devon's community of wannabe surfers just got bigger.
We rounded off the weekend with a relaxing massage and facial in the hotel's Haven beauty suite, where the wonderful Natalie managed to restore a couple of exhausted, straggle-haired surfers for the reluctant journey home.
For lovers of the great outdoors, north Devon really does deserve to be a get-away-from-it-all fixture. For larking around in the sea - coasteering, surfing, sailing and fishing - it is unrivalled, while landlubbers can walk the south-west coastal path or cycle on the traffic-free Tarka trail.
But whatever you do, make sure you are prepared to develop a serious pasty habit.
· Woolacombe Bay Hotel, Woolacombe, Devon, EX34 7BN woolacombe-bay-hotel.co.uk/index.html; 01271 870388
Prices for a stay over Friday and Saturday night range from £150 per room in low season to £250 in high season.
· A coasteering trip from Breathing Space costs £55 per person. A half-day surf lesson at Nick Thorn's surf academy costs £30.
· For more information, visit discoverdevon.com
