For years, 'snob yobs' wreaked havoc in a quiet corner of Cornwall. Now, says Bryony Gordon, the party is over They fight them on the beaches here in Cornwall. As the sun goes down over Polzeath Bay, and the families trickle back to their campsites clutching boogie boards, wind-breakers and buckets and spades, the police arrive. | |  | | The tide has turned: night-time revellers in Cornwall |
There are four of them, though at times they number up to 15 - quite a total when you consider that this seaside village has a population of around 400, and the nearest police station has just two officers when fully manned. But for tonight they will be here, monitoring the beach, right through until 3am. They have dispersal orders. They have "mosquito" devices, which emit a whine audible to teens but not adults. They have the power to ban people from setting foot on the beach. And they are not afraid to use them. The reason for their heavy-handedness is not the rowdy local youths - as is the problem in Redruth, just a 20-minute drive away, where the police had to introduce a 9pm curfew last week for under-16s. Here it is the tourists who cause the most trouble. To be precise, the posh tourists. The very, very posh, teenage tourists. They call them the yahs, or the snob yobs. Every year, for the past decade or so, they have descended on this westerly corner of the country as soon as the summer term finishes, wreaking havoc as they go. From Eton, Radley and Marlborough they come, armed with boating shoes, rugby shirts and a desire to party so strong that nothing can stand in their way. Certainly not the locals and their lovely white picket fences, which have frequently ended up as bonfire wood. It really took off in the late 1990s, when two blokes called William and Harry started to use the tiny seaside village of Rock as a summer holiday destination. From that moment, anybody who was anybody, or at least anybody who attended a public school, decided to go there, too. St Tropez? Pah. The islands of Greece? No thank you. Rock, with just one pub, a sailing school and commanding views over the Camel Estuary? Yes please. It didn't matter if the visitors were underage - in fact, it helped. Every night just before 10pm, hundreds of them would congregate at that one pub, Mariners Rock. It became a Mecca for the well-heeled yet badly behaved. "What school do you go to?" was a familiar cry, as they downed beer, wine and champagne and spilled on to the tiny road outside. It was not unheard of for passing cars to be pelted with shingle and beer bottles. When the Mariners closed for the night, its customers would walk the short distance to beautiful Daymer Bay. There they would romp in the dunes and litter the beach with detritus. If they got bored with the Mariners, there was the Oystercatcher, or Carters, just down the road at Polzeath. The scene on the beach at Polzeath was much the same: often there would be 1,000 teenagers drinking and carousing into the early hours, causing thousands of pounds' worth of vandalism in the process. For an area of sleepy coast no more than three miles long, it was moral Armageddon every single summer.However, last year, something far worse happened. A Radley schoolboy, George Frewer, slipped and fell from a cliff late at night. His body was found in the sea on the eve of what would have been his 17th birthday. This year all is tranquillity in Trebetherick, Polzeath and Rock. The only trouble is in the pubs, where takings are down. Dave, a barman in Carters, says: "Last year this place was heaving, complete madness. But they just didn't come down this year." The scene is similar at the Mariners, where there are all of 10 people. "Maybe it's the weather we are having," muses the barman, Andy. "Or the credit crunch," suggests another member of staff. No - the real reason the yobs have not come is the locals. They got fed up. They snapped. They refused to have another summer ruined by the yahs. "They come down here and forget that it isn't just a place to go on holiday - for many of us it is home," says one man building a sandcastle with his children on Polzeath beach. "They have no respect for anybody but each other, and how they can network with big shots from Eton." At the White Heron bed and breakfast, they had to close for several weeks because of the noise from partygoers. "We couldn't guarantee guests would get a good night's sleep," says Jodie Marks, who works there. "We had banners slashed and things broken and bottles and cans strewn out the front. There was a lot of public urination. The state-school kids who come later in the summer are as good as gold compared to these ones - they have their families with them, and can't afford to go away by themselves." A few years ago, the Trebetherick Residents' Association called on local businesses and homeowners to help raise £11,000 for a private security firm to patrol Daymer Bay. They rallied to the cause, and now it is guards, not amorous and inebriated teenagers, that you will find on the dunes. "It was absolute murder before," says Peter Godfrey, who works at the car park in the bay. "There was so much drinking and noise. But now it is bliss. It's expensive, yes, but the bottom line is that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself." That is not strictly true, for the police have also done stellar work on Polzeath. Last year they confiscated more than 400 fake IDs, and they have told the pubs and the two shops in which alcohol is available that they are operating "zero tolerance policing". "We won't even tolerate barbecues," says Sgt Simon Hutton. "There have been so many complaints from locals about the large numbers of fairly affluent young people who have caused disorder and criminal damage for a while now. It reached a point where something needed to be done." And so the police were given the power to ban people from the beach for up to 48 hours. Private landlords received letters warning them to look out for parents who paid for a property, only to put their kids and their kids' friends in it without adult supervision and stay in a hotel up the road. Campsites and letting agents clamped down and refused to let groups of teenagers in. "We have made it really unpleasant for the kids to come here," says Sgt Hutton. That much is true. On Daymer Bay during the day, a couple of bored-looking teenagers dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch sit and watch as kids build sandcastles. "It's not what it used to be," says one. "It was like our own Utopia, but that's gone now. It's boring. Next year we'll try Devon or Norfolk instead." They have been warned. | 
