Cornish town gets shiny new sign pointing to a marina 70 miles away – in Devon
A brand-new brown tourist sign in Falmouth helpfully directed visitors to Plymouth Marina. Plymouth is in another county. It lasted two days.
Brown tourist signs exist for one reason: to stop you getting lost on the way to somewhere nice. So spare a thought for the people of Falmouth, who woke up one Tuesday to find a gleaming new one directing them to Plymouth Marina.
Plymouth Marina is about 70 miles (112.6km) away. It is also in Devon, which, as any Cornish person will tell you at length, is a different county altogether.
To add a little extra confusion, the sign also bore the words “The Greenbank Hotel” – which actually is in Falmouth. So visitors were, in effect, being offered a choice: a short stroll to a hotel, or a pleasant hour and a half up the A38.
Cornwall Council moved swiftly, at least by signage standards. The sign was taken down on the Thursday and, the council said, will be replaced.
A spokesperson was diplomatic to a fault: “While Plymouth Marina is worthy of a tourist sign in the right location, this particular sign was not made to our specification.”
Which is perhaps the most polite way anyone has ever said “wrong county”.
The story was reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service. No sailors are known to have followed the sign to its logical conclusion, though we’d have loved to see them try.
