How St Ives became St Tropez as the recovery drives prices sky high

Merryn Somerset Webb finds herself at the epicentre of Britain’s V-shaped recovery as pent-up demand flows straight into Cornwall’s restaurants and beaches.

Tourists in St Ives
The world and its spouse has descended on Cornwall
(Image credit: © Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

I’m in Cornwall – and I am very much not alone. Last weekend the news channels were gleefully reporting that there were more people here than in London. Our drive here – admittedly from Edinburgh – took 14 hours. There were 2,500 cars in the car park at Harlyn Bay, a very popular north coast beach on Monday morning; I have never seen so many Land Rover Discoverys in one place.

I spent an hour on the phone before we left Scotland trying to book a dinner reservation. I finally scored a table at a not-quite-on-the-sea place in a south coast village. At 5pm. For an hour. Prices are following demand: a surfing lesson for seven? £380. Coffee and croissant for 3? £21. “Hamptons prices,” gasped an impressed New York friend.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.