During the Seventies, when the threat of IRA terrorism often overhung London’s gaiety like fog, my mother greeted each bomb blast with fresh plans for a family outing to the capital. If my siblings or I looked nervous, she would explain it was our patriotic duty to ignore bullies and support tourism. However, as she admitted when prodded, those dazed days of recovery also happened to be the best to head for museums and galleries, since the Tube was empty and queues non-existent. It was an excellent lesson and one I’ve tried to live by ever since. I never felt so much my mother’s child as when I took my boys to London during the 2011 summer riots, strolling the deserted streets of Camden, then along to an eerily visitor-free zoo.

So when I was looking for somewhere to escape for a week’s intensive writing, my thoughts turned to the flood-hit South West. I peered online at all the severe flood warnings and realised that – contrary to popular opinion – Somerset and north Devon were open for business. As one tourism bod explained to me patiently, “the M5 is open as usual and so long as you avoid the Somerset Levels, you can get to just about everywhere”.

Indeed you can. A plan took shape. I took the train to Bath, then hired a car to potter along the A38, diverting, on impulse, for a squint at Cheddar Gorge. Great gashes of rock glittered in bright sun, but the myriad coffee bars and gift shops at the foot of the Gorge were quiet as the Mary Celeste.

Dunster Castle, near Minehead, was similarly ghostly. I stopped at a nearby inn and the ex-squaddie who ran the place told me that the rain-sodden winter had killed his business, since the public perception was that Somerset was impassable. His employers had relinquished the lease, leaving him awaiting the brewery’s final decision on the pub.

From Dunster I drove along Exmoor’s Heritage Coast route, marvelling at the long stretches of road where the only sign of life was grazing ponies. Finally, I crested a hill and saw Lynmouth’s harbour chafed by rolling surf below and the Victorian villas of Lynton perched on the cliffs. My heart did a somersault at the beauty of the view.

Yet when I arrived at Lynton’s charming Castle Hill B&B, I was the only guest. Yes, it’s out of season, but still bafflingly quiet. Locals told me the usual half-term onslaught of tourists had never materialised.

It seemed ironic here, of all places, for business to be diminished by flooding miles away. In August 1952, Lynmouth suffered some of the worst storm damage in living memory when 10in of rain fell in 24 hours. Trees and rocks were carried down the steep Exmoor slopes engorging the East and West Lyn rivers, which burst their banks by night with devastating results: 34 people lost their lives on Exmoor, while 93 buildings were swept away or damaged and 132 vehicles went missing. So the residents of this part of Devon have every right to be a bit baffled by the timidity of the modern tourist.

Where are Britain’s newly retired baby-boomers when you need them? These sprightly silvers are a unique generation, enjoying good pensions allied to improved health care. If they can bop to the Rolling Stones, they can surely hike up north Devon’s Valley of Rocks. Don’t they have a moral duty to spend the dividends of their good fortune keeping our great beauty spots solvent?

It would be a crime, in any case, to exit this earth without first having experienced the vertiginous thrills of the water-powered Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway, a wonder of Victorian ingenuity. They could then drive further west and boost the Cornish businesses savaged by the railway’s collapse at Dawlish. We should give Good Citizen awards to those who eschew Spain and Tuscany in favour of the not so flood-blighted West Country.