Cullompton, a small town in mid-Devon, suffered badly through the economic downturn of recent years and when we first arrived here, almost three years ago, had many empty shops and was looking terribly run-down. Over the ensuing year or two, even more shops and businesses closed (bakery, sweet shop, children's clothing outlet, shoe shop, etc) and things were looking pretty bleak ... probably not helped by the fairly recent opening of a large Tesco store within easy walking distance of the High Street.
Like many others, we did succumb to the "convenience" of buying everything in one big supermarket and - against our better judgment - shopped mostly in Tesco. (That admission embarrasses me even more!!) However, we did use our excellent butcher from time to time, discovered that the card shop provided lovely greetings cards at far lower price than Tesco, and celebrated when a long-wished-for greengrocers opened up last autumn. In the last 6-12 months, several new shops have opened up and things are looking a bit more positive ... we want to support them (better late than never, I suppose!) and help our High Street to thrive once again.
We went into this lovely little (sadly underused) gifts & accessories shop, called Very Nice ... and I love the fact that you can see part of the High Street reflected in the glass cases - bank, estate agents, chinese restaurant/takeaway and war memorial, still with its poppy wreaths from November.
This is what we did on the High Street today:
Butcher, for our weekend meats - unfortunately, they don't stock much organic meat, but it is all from local farmers, with traceable and trusted history. We've never yet had anything of poor quality from there ... they also cook their own ham, etc, and their own sausages are the best ever!
Greengrocers, to buy two bags full of fruit & veg (for less than £8.00) - again, not organic, but quite a bit of local-grown produce.
"Peggy's Pantry", the "deli" (a funny little place, where the owner and her staff wear Victorian maids' costumes!) for some bread made in nearby Honiton
Visited our lovely new library, where I found out about their monthly book club
Card shop for a sister's upcoming birthday (also reminded them I'd like to work there when a vacancy arises!!)
Co-op, for a few general grocery and household bits
"Very Nice" gifts and accessories shop, looking for a little token gift for my sister's birthday.
It's the start of a whole new way of shopping for us ... and I'm very happy about it!
Our High Street consists mainly of art galleries, souvenir and clothes shops, a Coop, a butcher, 4 estate agents, a newsagents, Chinese takeaway, 2 fish and chip shops and very little else. It's lost its charm. For the time being freshly caught fish is still available direct from the fishermen, but for how long?
ReplyDeleteSu - apart from the art galleries and souvenir shops (we have a number of charity shops instead!!), that sounds very much like our High Street, except we do have about half a dozen hairdressers (bizarrely!) and roughly the same number of (even more bizarrely!!) dentists! We get a mobile fishmonger once or twice a week, but we're never quite sure when he's going to be around! Still ... what we HAVE got, I'm going to try to support as much as I can, in the hope that even more shops will gradually re-open if we can all keep patronising local business.
ReplyDeleteI applaud you Val! One day I too will shop like this.
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