Andy Stewart, the muscular 53-year-old coastal ranger on Polzeath beach, and retired local police officer, could be forgiven for wanting...

Andy Stewart, the muscular 53-year-old coastal ranger on Polzeath beach, and retired local police officer, could be forgiven for wanting an early night.

For two weeks he and his two cohorts, along with the local police and restaurant security guards, have been patrolling the beach until the early hours, trying to manage the hordes of public-school kids, many as young as 12, who descend after dark to take part in what is affectionately termed among parents as ‘snog week’.

That, however, is a label that does not begin to cover the darker side of the late-night carousing this affluent part of Cornwall has become famous for in July.

Certainly for the citizens of Polzeath, what really goes on in their beautiful town among the sons and daughters of some of the UK’s wealthiest families — drunkenness, vandalism, under-age sex — is no laughing matter.

So concerned were residents at last year’s antics that this year Andy’s team has been joined by two policemen every night, and two security guards — Jezra Mackenzie and Jules Turner — who work the door at the Surfside restaurant.

They’ve also installed infra-red cameras directed at the beach, sweeping torchlights and police enforcement of a new ban on alcohol on the beach.

‘The sex,’ says Andy abruptly, when asked what has shocked him most these past two weeks, since the end of English public schools’ summer term and the gathering of teens from all over the country.

‘I didn’t notice it last year — maybe because we were so busy dealing with the overt criminality, and we didn’t have the floodlights or cameras.

‘They’re just way too young.One sweep of the torch and you can see kids having sex.’

On Friday July 7, after the private schools had broken up and there was a surge of partying, he recalls a late-night tour of the cliff edges.

‘At first, it was a good atmosphere — lots of cheering, friends catching up,’ he says.’But an hour in, it turned to more cavalier behaviour, as the numbers increased to 300 and the atmosphere became more edgy.

‘Around 11.30pm, with the crowds controlled, I went off with a big powerful torch to check no one was on the cliffs to the right side of the beach.[It’s dangerous there, due to the risk of rockfalls.]

‘Sweeping my beam around, I picked up lots of young teenagers at the cliff base, groups of three to five couples, lying on the floor, either having sex or getting very close. At least two couples were in various stages of undress.

‘One young girl, most definitely under 16, was sitting on top of this lad on the floor without her top on. It’s uncomfortable for me to describe this — I’m a father myself.The police must deal with the legalities, so I just slowly walked towards them, with frequent flashes of the torch to force to them disengage.

‘They got dressed and ran off. The fear is how much alcohol some of them have been plied with.

‘There’s nothing wrong with having a holiday romance,’ he continues, ‘but not at the age of 14.There are lots of dangers around that, especially when alcohol is involved. There are issues of vulnerability and consent.

‘We feel like whistle-blowers [whistle-blowing to the parents about their offspring’s fun], but if parents really knew what was going on, they wouldn’t let their teenagers come here.’

Many parents are learning the hard way just how naive they have been in letting their young teens go to the beach.One traumatised father I speak to went to pick up his 14-year-old daughter last Friday at 11pm — it wasn’t her first beach party — and eventually found her pinned down on the sand, under an older boy, his hand far up her short skirt.

He took her straight back to their holiday home.

A mother tells me how foolish she felt for even considering it: ‘I was taking my daughter and her friend down to the beach on Monday; they had been a few times with a curfew of 11pm.When we pulled up, two policeman stopped me and said, as the girls got out, was I aware that leaving them here meant they were in danger of sexual assault?

‘I looked back at my beautiful 14-year-old and thought: ‘What the hell I am doing?’ And I got them both back in the car.’

‘We hadn’t had anything excessive here, in terms of parties, since the early Noughties,’ sighs Andy, who began working as a beach ranger in 2019, after 30 years in the Devon and Cornwall police force.

We meet in his beach ranger hut, which overlooks the 640m-wide stretch of glorious sand, ‘from the glamorous setting beside the public loos’, he laughs.

Flash cars swing in and out of the car park ferrying late surfers home and a few teenage girls mill about in their laidback uniform of hoodies, cropped tops and short denim skirts.It’s quieter than usual, says Andy, a testament perhaps to the work he and his team have put in.

‘Last year, we were dealing with extreme criminal behaviour,’ Andy tells me. And from some of the UK’s most privileged children.

He describes up to 500 revellers, many from top public schools including Marlborough, Eton and Harrow, ripping up young trees for firewood, tearing benches worth thousands of pounds from their moorings by Surfside restaurant, and burning them on the beach.

Protection equipment for the RNLI and lifeguard rings were torn down and destroyed; the emergency phone repeatedly pulled off and thrown across the sand.

Many parents, perhaps remembering their own fun nights here as teenagers, drop off their offspring at 9.30pm, returning at 11pm to pick them up; others stay till 3am.But reality is finally sinking in.

As a regular holidaymaker in Polzeath, and a mother of two, neither of whom have been to the parties, I understand how parents find it hard to imagine exactly what their kids get up to.

The coastline is breathtaking; the beaches filled during the day with young children and picnicking families.To the west, it’s overlooked by a crab shack and car park; to the north, steep cliffs.

Twenty-three years ago, I was sent to report on the drunken antics in the dunes after Prince Harry was spotted holidaying here. Then all the action was based in Rock and the Mariner’s Arms Pub.I watched hordes of teenagers clutching alcopops, slipping off to smoke the odd bit of weed, before disappearing to holiday homes their parents had rented for them.

But the party scene today is unrecognisable from those far more innocent days.