Let's move to Minehead and Dunster, Somerset | Money | The Guardian

Let's move to Minehead and Dunster, Somerset | Money | The Guardian

What's going for it? The presence of a Butlins or Pontin's was once the kiss of death for property prices. These days, holiday camps can be cool. Why, Minehead Butlins even has the Miami-art-deco-inspired "BlueSkies" timeshare apartments. And for the past few years it's hosted that most modish of festivals, All Tomorrow's Parties, which next month brings a host of hip acts to a town that used to be more "end-of-the-pier". But the recent application of cool to Minehead doesn't seem to have changed the town one iota. Its streets aren't plastered in Dalston-cool bars. Its thatched cottages have not been snapped up by international DJs after a bijou retreat to beat Ibiza or Koh Samui. This is not a criticism. Rather the opposite. It is still a place where the bizarre meets the prosaic. The strangest things occur beneath the surface. Like its May Day shenanigans, when self-respecting accountants and IT clerks dress up as hobbyhorses to see off the marauding Danish. Arthur C Clarke was born here. Coleridge wrote The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner here. Someone or other wrote All Things Bright And Beautiful. And Butlins. All in Minehead. Must be on some ley line of weirdness.

The case against Not a lot. ......