How posh Cornish resort became tearaway teens’ hangout – with drugs, vandalism and underage sex
“AREN’T you going to search me?” asks a blonde woman, pushing her way to the front of the beach bar queue.
Her wedding ring glints in the moonlight as she runs her manicured fingers down the bouncer’s arm.
It’s 11pm on a Friday night and I’m on patrol with the local security guards — who tell me how they are chatted up every night by yummy mummies holidaying in posh Polzeath, Cornwall.
While the parents quaff champagne at the bar, their little darlings cause chaos on the idyllic beach.
Once a hangout for Prince Harry, the picturesque village is now the party capital of the UK — with fed-up locals complaining of “tearaway teens having sex everywhere” and turning their home into more down-at-heel “Newquay”.
Up to 400 youngsters swarmed the beach this month, many boozing and engaging in underage sex, drugs and vandalism.
The teenagers’ parties have been so wild that the council has installed floodlights and a towering CCTV camera to watch the beach.
Julian Ward-Turner, 44, a security guard who works the door at the beach bar Surfside says: “The parents literally dump their kids on the beach and go and drink inside.
“Sometimes their kids will come to the door and ask for their parents and the dad will come out and tell them to bugger off.
“Then they’ll go back inside and order another bottle of wine, while their kids get up to all sorts outside.”
His colleague, Jezra Mackenzie, 25, adds: “Some mums are really flirty.
“They’ll say stuff like, ‘Aren’t you going to ID us?’. If we refuse to search them, they’ll say, ‘Oh go on, give us a little pat down’.
Broken bottles
“They’re often worse than the kids.”
Locals are fed up with the parties, mainly attended by privately educated kids whose parents own second homes in the affluent surfing village.
The party-goers leave broken bottles, condoms, sanitary towels and empty packets that once held cocaine strewn over the beach.
“You come in the mornings and find a festival scene,” says Polzeath beach ranger Andy Stewart, 53, a retired police officer who spent 30 years in the force.
“Parents didn’t give a s**t about the broken bottles and criminal damage but when we mentioned kids having sex, all of a sudden they were interested.
“When they drop their kids off at 10pm, and some are as young as 12, we ask the parents what they think their kids are getting up to.
“I’ll say, ‘Do you think they’re sitting around playing the guitar and swapping numbers or do you think they’re doing cocaine and having sex?’.
“Polzeath has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
“However, when you get a bunch of visitors you get a cross-section of community.
“While 95 per cent of the kids are great, five per cent of them will push boundaries with drugs and sex.”
Polzeath has long had a reputation as a home of the rich and famous, with the then Prince Charles, David Cameron and actress Helena Bonham Carter all enjoying time in the village dubbed Chelsea-on-Sea.
Prince William was snapped messing around in the water with his younger brother and a group of mates in 2012.
In recent years the Cornish coast has become trendy among youngsters on TikTok and Snapchat.
A quick search on TikTok brings up hundreds of disturbing videos of young girls — who look no older than 14 — walking to the Polzeath Caves while saying: “Uh oh — someone’s going to get chlamydia tonight.”
A 14-year-old boy tells me how the “notorious shagging spot” has now been dubbed Chlamydia Caves among the revellers.
Security guard Julian says: “We found two young couples half undressed in there the other day.
“Often the condoms are washed out to sea when the tide comes in.”
Andy adds: “Who can say they’ve never had sex on holiday? Not me, that’s for sure.
“But if youngsters are having sex on the beach and they’re underage or they’ve been supplied alcohol and drugs it could be unlawful.
“It’s uncomfortable to see. I’m a father and one time I saw a girl, who looked younger than 16, sat on top of a boy without her top on.
“We don’t want someone to get raped or a kid to fall off the cliff because they’re high on coke.”
Other TikTok videos show a young boy walking around the beach asking girls to play “kiss or slap” and other young girls dance around while chanting, “I want to ride a Ranger”.
“The parents have no idea what their kids are doing,” continues Andy.
“An angry mum came to me the other day and was disgusted that her 14-year-old daughter had been offered ketamine, coke and cannabis on the beach.
She said they were never going to holiday here again.
“We know from our time in the police that the cocaine in Cornwall has about eight per cent purity.
“So we don’t know what else they’re mixing it with.”
Drugs seem to be prevalent. Within five minutes of arriving in Polzeath I heard a group of teens in a pub boasting about cutting cocaine with their “Monzo card”.
“Henry”, who looked around 20, was talking so openly about his drug use that he prompted a granny’s eyes on a nearby table to nearly pop out.
“I’ve already drunk eight pints of Rattler (Cornish cider),” Henry told me, as he invited me to their party.
A girl in the group, who looked about 17, said she would get her “t*ts out” to hitchhike home after their night out.
“If worse comes to worse I can just call Mummy and Daddy to pick us up,” replied Henry.
Adam Saunders, 23, a graduate who works in a pizza restaurant on the beach, reckons the parents are to blame for their kids’ behaviour.
“Some of the kids are so entitled and rude,” he says.
“We are always clearing up smashed bottles in the morning.
“But their parents are to blame. They often drink-drive and swerve all over the road when they drop them off in their Range Rovers.”
His colleague Tatty, 21, adds: “It’s been so bad. The way the bottles are smashed is as if they’ve done it deliberately, rather than they’ve just dropped them.
“No one cares about them having a good time, just clear up after yourself.
“One night they’d only been there for about an hour and Andy had cleared up about eight bags of rubbish. There’s no respect.”
I quickly learn how muscular beach ranger Andy, who is 6ft 4in, has become a bit of a local heart-throb among the women.
A group of mums giggle like schoolgirls as they tell me they wouldn’t mind getting “in trouble” on the beach so he can come and “rescue” them.
“Everyone thinks Andy’s a fitty,” says Tatty, laughing. “He’s built like a brick s**thouse but also really nice.”
When I ask Andy if he is aware of his fan club, he laughs and says: “I didn’t think people would be keen on an old-timer like me.
“There are much younger and fitter lifeguards around.
“There’s always been harmless flirting from women but I don’t want to mix business with pleasure while representing my employers and a community who trust me to get a job done.”
Andy and his team, including Charlie Marrow, a fellow ex-cop of 32 years who spent 18 years with The Met, have seen great results from their crack down.
Andy says: “Because of the success we’ve had this year we’ve received calls from other seaside towns having similar problems asking us for help. It’s our 360-degrees approach.
“Every night there’s two police officers patrolling the beach, along with us and the Surfside’s security officers. We all work as a team.”
When they’re not saving lives or stopping rowdy teenagers from trashing the beach, they’re busy solving other crimes.
“My new flip-flops were nicked this week,” says Charlie with a laugh.
“And a few other people have had theirs stolen. It could have been somebody who mistook them for theirs, but because we captured them on CCTV we were able to retrieve them a few days later with a bit of detective work.”
Back on patrol, security guards Julian and Jez have confiscated dozens of fake IDs tonight.
“The italic signature is usually a big giveaway,” says Julian. “Who uses italic handwriting these days?”
But Polzeath’s protectors are in luck this evening.
The weather has put paid to parties and the few stragglers left on the beach are quickly identified by the floodlights and escorted off.
“The busiest period for us is the first three weeks of July when the private schools break up,” explains Andy.
“We are hopefully over the worst of it, but time will tell.”
For now, it’s Beach Rangers 1, Sloane Rangers 0.