Travelling light means washing your clothes. Here’s why I love it

To every yin, there is a yang; or as The Byrds once suggested (borrowing from the King James Bible), there’s a time for every purpose under heaven. So, upon arriving in Penzance after a five-hour train ride from London, I was desperate to do some laundry.

Visiting a laundromat while travelling can be a pleasure, not a chore.Credit: iStock

Travelling light has many benefits: while toting only a cabin-luggage-sized backpack, you can zip through airports and walk to hotels from train stations. But this flexibility means you have to do laundry regularly, and that chore was on my to-do list as I stepped out of Penzance railway station. Then I stopped, transfixed by what met my eyes. On one corner of the nearby intersection was a laundrette – and opposite that was a pub.

It was a match made in heaven. I turned around, walked back to the train station loos and re-dressed, braving the breezy Cornish day in an outfit which consisted of (in its entirety) a fleece jacket, black trousers, and boots without socks. Everything else was going in the wash.

Then, having put on a load at the Suds & Surf, I stepped across to the Longboat Inn. Under the guidance of the barman, I ordered a local brew from the St Austell Brewery, which I sipped while chatting with another couple of travellers visiting Cornwall.

Credit: Jamie Brown

After 45 minutes, I asked the barman to mind my backpack, and crossed the road to transfer my clothes to the dryer. Then it was back to the pub for another beer. I can’t see how this system could be beaten, and there was a benefit beyond gaining a pile of warm, clean clothing. In the process of doing my washing, I’d interacted with various people and discovered a perfect local pub with a perfect local brew.

It made me reflect on the nature of travel. We focus on cities’ great museums, art treasures and monuments and make a beeline to them. But there’s also something to be said for hanging around neighbourhoods and experiencing the same businesses and services that locals use.

On my travels, I’ve often enjoyed rubbing shoulders with residents going about their day. In Brussels, I dropped into a neighbourhood bistro for a simple meal of a hamburger and frites, eavesdropping on my fellow diners; in Cairo, I visited a dingy post office in a side street to buy stamps using basic Arabic; and in Fukuoka, I posted a box of excess luggage home, the Japanese clerk expediting the process with infinite patience using a translation app. I also once killed time before a dinner engagement by reading in the local library in Interlaken, Switzerland.

But I think the best local immersion comes from visiting a laundrette. In Victoria, Canada, I washed a load before visiting the nearby Emily Carr House, devoted to a famous author (I’d discovered the place on my phone’s maps while hunting for the laundrette). In Copenhagen, I enjoyed a surprisingly affordable lunch in a cafe which combined its dining room with coin-operated washing machines out the back. And in Zagreb, Croatia, last year, I wasted several €1 coins in a huge dryer before a fellow patron pointed out that I’d misinterpreted the temperature dial in the opposite direction to “hot”.

None of these were life-changing experiences, but it felt good to have some downtime from the high-calibre sightseeing we all feel pressured to undertake. Nothing could beat that day in Penzance, switching between the suds of the wash and the froth on that excellent beer. All laundrettes should have neighbouring pubs; that’s my lemon-fresh, red-hot take.

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