A wave of momentary panic came over me as I looked around at the elderly couples and families sat at the boarding gate – had I misread the departures board?
Surely this flight should be full of stags and hens who are about to torture me for an hour and a half as they screech Sweet Caroline on a loop all the way to Newquay?
But no, instead we all sat quietly on the plane with the only interruptions being a gurgle from a bonny baby and a few wealthy sounding laughs from elegant ladies with fabulous blow dries and husbands who look like they’ve never told them no.
I’d never even been to Cornwall before, let alone Newquay, and my only impression of it was how haggard my dad and brother had looked after they’d come home from stag dos there when I was young.
But what I was met with when I stepped off the plane was a far cry from the mayhem my feral sibling and dad had indulged all those years ago.
Because yes, it seems Newquay, the seaside town once dubbed ‘Britain’s Magaluf’ has completely overhauled its image.
Locals and business owners say Newquay is unrecognisable these days after the council put their foot down and introduced a strict no-nonsense ‘mankini ban’ in 2009.
The new law, part of the award-winning Newquay Safe campaign, banned all ‘inappropriate clothing’ – mainly fancy dress – in public.
It was a crackdown born from tragedy after two drunken teenagers plunged to their deaths from cliffs whilst on nights out in the town.
Andrew Curwell, 18, was on holiday celebrating the end of his A-level exams with friends when he died on June 28, 2009.
After drifting apart from his friends on a pub crawl, the teenager lost his wallet and horrifically fell 100ft from a cliff as he searched for it.
Just nine days later, Paddy Higgins, 16, met the same tragic fate when he also plummeted from a cliff on Tolcarne Beach.
Similarly to Andrew, Paddy had been blowing off steam with pals after finishing their GCSEs and was found to be three times over the legal drink-drive limit in post-mortem exams.
The two youngsters deaths paired with the general chaos of the rowdy nightlife spurred on the council’s plan to reform the area.
And it worked, by 2012, Devon and Cornwall Police reported a 20 per cent drop in crime compared to 2009, with anti-social behaviour incidents dropping from 685 to just 286.
Now, there I was 16 years on, tasked with figuring out if the good behaviour was being kept up – and perhaps, if it was actually worth it?
I live in London and went to a school in deep Towie territory – AKA Brentwood. I got my hands on a fake ID at an age far younger than I’d like to admit, so I’m no stranger to boozing culture.
But in the cab from the airport to the hotel I couldn’t spot a single person who looked like they had gone near a pint in years.
I put my window down to give my lungs a dose of sea air and was hit with the surprising smell of cannabis.
Then I spotted the surfers – sandy hair, tanned skin, wet suits, bare feet and an air of superiority that makes your eye start twitching.
Ah, it’s THAT kind of town now.
‘Yes, it’s much calmer now,’ my taxi driver told me, ‘It’s all surfers and families. We still get the stags and hens but not as many and they don’t cause problems when they get in the car.’
Hmm, perhaps I won’t be needing that Berocca after all, I thought to myself.
I dumped my bags in my hotel room and gawked at the breath-taking view of the beach from my window before heading out to explore Newquay in the daylight.
The highstreet seemed stuck between two identities – a traditional seaside resort with budget souvenir shops and fast food joints and a quaint upmarket town with Dalston-esque coffee shops run by millennials backed by the bank of mum and dad.
Why is there a rundown Original Factory Shop, a Bargain Booze and a Peacocks on the same stretch of road as a CBD shop and an independent cafe where they put an edible flower in my latte?
It appeared to have become somewhat of a gentrified Clacton-on-Sea – where I spent every weekend and school holiday as a caravan kid.
I whipped out my phone, pulled up TikTok and searched for ‘Newquay lunch spots’ and decided to head to a popular joint other Gen Z’s were raving about in their videos.
Blend, which dubs itself ‘Bali on the bay’, was brimming with trendy 20-somethings and a few families tucking into Instagram worthy smoothie bowls overflowing with fruit and bright green glasses of iced matcha.
I ordered the sunset bowl and a white chocolate matcha, and whilst both were delicious, I couldn’t help but feel a fry-up and full fat coke would be a better – and more respectable – hangover cure.
But some locals argue that despite its respectable new look, Newquay isn’t as calm as others say.
Alan McCusker, 47, said: ‘There is still a scene here and it does get way out of control sometimes.
‘I saw a guy pick another man up by the gold chain around his neck outside a nightclub recently.’
The father-of-five insisted it still gets ‘very violent, very quickly’ at night during the busy summer months.
Now unsure of what to expect, I headed back to my room to get ready for my night out on the town.
During the day it had been hard to walk down the main strip where hundreds of families were mooching around buying trinkets or begrudgingly letting their kids get airbrush tattoos.
But now it was a complete ghost town, so quiet that it almost felt eerie as the sea fret lay like a salty blanket over our heads.
Nearing the end of the highstreet, I started to see and hear some signs of life which we soon discovered were coming from the watering hole of choice for… well everyone.
The Central Inn gave huge Wetherspoon vibes – an outdoor area where most people had plotted up attached to a dark pub with maroon carpets harbouring the smell of stale beer with a few red-nosed old men sat in the corner.
It was just outside here that we finally found our first herd of slurring stags in matching t-shirts emblazoned with nicknames which I am sure were hilarious to them.
Leading the pack was Vil, who was having a final blow out before his upcoming wedding in Birmingham.
I tried to speak to them, but they were far to busy posing for my photographer and the only response I got from any of them was painfully loud ‘Weheyyy!’.
We set the young bucks free and watched them stumble into the night before heading into the The Central Inn.
Outside sat around a table were a group of excitable hens wearing some questionable novelty shirts and downing drinks as if it were the end of a prohibition.
Slurring her words, the bride-to-be Gemma Jones told me she had chosen the quiet town for the girl’s trip purely for nostalgia.
‘I just love Newquay. We’ve been coming here for years. Every girls’ weekend we come here.’
But they were not planning to go out drinking the next day and instead her thoughtful pals had arranged a relaxing spa day for the following morning.
Around an hour later, we came across the next group of revellers dressed up to the nines as cowgirls and cowboys.
Sky Hemphill was seeing in her 23rd birthday in a pink corset, tutu and cowgirl boots as she and her gang stumbled around the streets – with one tumbling over when her heel got caught on a cobble stone.
I assumed they were out-of-towners but Sky told me she had moved to Newquay a year ago because ‘I’m 23 and want to live by the beach, why not!’ – fair enough.
‘I love it here. It’s not as lively as it was before but it will liven up more in a few weeks time,’ she said before being dragged away by a friend desperate to carry on their boozy pilgrimage.
One local, who asked to remain anonymous, gave me good insight into how the bars and pubs work together to ward off any trouble.
He said: ‘It used to be bad for the hen and stag dos but it’s right calmed down now.
‘They’ve introduced these rules and the pubs work together, so if there’s a rowdy group of stags they get on the radio and warn the other pubs and then they’re basically banned from them all.
‘And if they try to go in some bars and clubs in those outfits they will turn them away.
‘Newquay is aimed more at families now, which is good. There used to be loads of strip clubs and people on the roads like promoters handing out tokens but it’s all gone now. It’s shed that reputation and it’s much nicer now.’
I sat outside The Central Inn for another hour. It was very dull – even the bouncers looked like they were falling asleep.
Off on another walk around, we trotted past Sailors pub and club which is supposedly very popular but there was barely anyone there and I wouldn’t have been surprised if a tumble weed drifted past.
The Dead Famous, another spot which is said to be favoured by young people, only lived up to the first part of its name.
Even the Belushi’s was basically dormant.
It was all getting painfully boring until we walked back past The Central Inn and witnessed a jacked up man land a devastating right-hander on a much smaller and drunker guy in front of a bar with an arcade boxing machine outside.
I rushed over to the now hysterical victim Callum who had blood pouring down his face to find out what happened.
‘I don’t even know him!’ he wailed, ‘He was walking around saying he wanted to punch someone, so I asked him who he wanted to punch and then he punched me in the face!’
Callum was being tended to by a group of underage girls who had been swigging vodka on the streets and approaching everyone and anyone for a hug and told me several times how much they loved me.
They reminded me of my street raking self at their age and so I stuck around to give them a big sister lecture on staying away from older men and getting home safe.
Perhaps I made them feel comfortable or, more likely, the cheap liquor made them loose lipped as they soon started trauma dumping on me about their parents and boyfriends.
Some of the horrific things they had been through at the ages of just 14, 15 and 16 made it clear why they were drinking and smoking so chaotically on the streets.
By the time I finished comforting them it was half past 12 and we decided to call it a night.
I sat and reflected on my Newquay trip whilst taking off my makeup in my hotel room and came to a conclusion.
During the day, it’s as good and as busy as any seaside town, even with the smug surfer dudes and social class confused high-street.
But the only words I could think of to accurately describe Newquay nights were: dead, boring and rather sad.
The ghosts of its heyday haunt the streets in the form of troubled underage drinkers, the occasional stag or hen do there for nostalgia rather than crowds and sporadic bust ups between men just desperate to feel something.
If you deem that to be a success for the councils crackdown, then so be it, but I found myself pining for more people, more laughter and even just a little bit more chaos.