My missing brother turned up in an ice-cream van

For the latest in his series of reflections on places and pathways, Will Gore recalls a fearful disappearance on Bournemouth beach during a childhood holiday

Red alert: the hordes at Bournemouth beach (Getty)

Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, wrote Noel Coward in 1931. Had he been alive nine decades later he might usefully have added that most of them do so on Bournemouth beach.

The recent spectacle of up to half a million people crowded into a small portion of the south coast was certainly the kind of phenomenon for which Coward would surely have had a biting witticism at the ready – but perhaps even he might have struggled to say anything jaunty about trippers defecating in a burger box in the absence of proper facilities. Something about a quarter-pounder I suppose.

But even putting aside the bizarre inability of so many Englishmen (and women) to dispose of their litter responsibly – which demands at least a column of its own – and the extraordinary recklessness of travelling to a tourist hotspot in the midst of a pandemic, the charms of a British seaside town in summer are questionable at the best of times.

Bournemouth beach was a regular feature of my early childhood, as it happens. Until I was 12, my grandparents lived just outside Ringwood, a few miles to the north, having retired to the coast after a working life spent in London’s suburbs.

We visited them two or three times a year, usually at Easter and in the summer, as well as occasional half-term holidays. The New Forest was nearer than the sea, and even as a child I tended to be happier with heather and bracken under my feet than sand. Still, we usually went to the beach at least once on each visit – to Bournemouth or the neighbouring Highcliffe – if the weather was fine.

Only one seaside trip really sticks in the memory though. I was five or six, my brother just three. All three generations of the family were there, although for some reason my father had been called away, presumably for work. My mother may have imagined that having her in-laws on hand would ease her childcare burdens – though I’m not sure it ever worked out like that.

It was a hot day: the kind which in 2020 would have parents reaching for the factor 50 to slather over their children – but which in 1985 simply left sunseekers of every age scarlet round the edges. We built sandcastles and then swam a bit, avoiding the dog turds which were as de rigueur on UK beaches in the Eighties as human waste apparently is this summer.

I’m not sure how long it took us to realise that my brother had disappeared. He had been with us one minute, and gone the next, seemingly having vanished into thin air.

On the few occasions when I have lost sight of my kids when we are out and about, even momentarily, my heart jumps into my mouth

My mum and grandad scurried around, walking first one way along the beach then the other, scanning the shoreline and asking other holidaymakers if they had seen a blonde-haired little boy passing by. Nobody had. I stayed put with my grandmother, wondering what had become of him, but oblivious to the ghastly possibilities which must have been running through my mother’s mind.

The nearest lifeguard was informed and swung into action, radioing colleagues and the police along the miles-long strip of golden sands. Mum, increasingly frantic, continued to ask passers-by about possible sightings.

An hour and more went by. Then, as suddenly as there had been an absence, there was news.

The lifeguards had been contacted by a woman who had found a child outside the ice-cream van she was running. They were heading there now but he matched the description – and sure enough, it was my naughty brother, who was soon returned to the relieved bosom of his family, apparently none the worse for his adventure. The lady, in fact, had given him an ice cream, which I thought was stunningly unfair.

My brother said he had decided to see what was behind the beach huts which lined the part of the seafront where we had set up base. Fairly quickly he had lost any sense of where he had come from, so simply kept walking until the long row of huts came to an end.

It is only since I had children of my own that I have come to understand how frightened my mother must have been. On the few occasions when I have lost sight of my kids when we are out and about, even momentarily, my heart jumps into my mouth. For those parents whose children do not turn up safe and well, the pain can barely be imagined.

For 35 years, my enduring image of Bournemouth beach has been my mother’s anxiety-ridden face. I may be the only person in the country to be glad that, from now on, any mention of Bournemouth beach will make me think instead of a desperate tourist crapping in a polystyrene tub.