It’s cheaper and the weather’s great – a summer of staycationing | Patrick Collinson

A (very) unscientific poll finds a lot to be recommended in having your holiday in Blighty

I rang a colleague this week, not realising she was on holiday. I caught her on a campsite in Suffolk, in the pouring rain, camping gear strewn in the wind and children crying. Never again, she said. Yet my admittedly anecdotal poll of staycationers in Bournemouth to Broadstairs (my six brothers and sisters plus their families make up nearly a Gallup poll in themselves) tells me that the great unintended staycation summer went surprisingly well – until last week’s downpours, at least. This is what we learned.

The weather is really not that bad Bournemouth’s packed beaches were perhaps the iconic seaside shot of the coronavirus summer, for good reasons and bad. On five consecutive weeks from mid-July, temperatures in the resort hit 24C, peaking at 33C in early August.