I visited Whitstable for the first time in ages last weekend. Having lived there for the best part of 20 years, I was intrigued to see all the changes I had read so much about.

When I’d first moved there in the mid-1990s, it was a cheap and cheerful sort of place – with rents comfortably below that of nearby Canterbury.

It was a little scruffy in spots and many of the homes on the main road leading into the town centre were notable for being student digs.

But there was a clear sense of community and, of course, a beautiful beach lurking behind the main string of shops. It was like stumbling upon one of Kent’s hidden secrets; an unconventional, peaceful, seaside town with a bit of character.

A former colleague of mine who had long since settled there, warned me that “once you move to Whitstable, you won’t ever want to leave’.

He was right. Up to a point.

Because things started to change – barely perceptible at first, but shift they did, like the shingle on its shoreline.

A few years after we’d turned our back on renting and bought a house there (which still wept salt from its walls where the sea surge of 1953 had left much of the town half-submerged) it moved from hidden treasure to discovered delight.

The Oyster Festival – normally a community event which saw families from the town head to the street to join in the fun – was named in a list of the world’s greatest festivals by a London publisher. Now, I’m not saying it wasn’t a perfectly glorious experience...but better than the Cannes Film Festival? Really?

It was a clear sign the world outside of Kent had opened the shell and discovered this little pearl of a place.

The shops started to change, more and more restaurants sprang up. It was, undoubtedly, great at first, but the realities of the seemingly relentless praise it received in the broadsheets provided some more practical ones for those of us living there.

Where once you could comfortably pop up to Sainsbury’s upon a summer’s Saturday morning and return to a parking space outside your home with all your bags, you had to now consider the realities. How long would it take for someone in a (clunking stereotype alert) Land Rover from Islington to reach Whitstable if they left at, say 9am? Because if you timed it wrong, they would surely be parked in every available free space (or, if no free space, then simply parked on pavements).

It’s a first-world problem, I totally accept, but when you’re having to lug your shopping from half-a-mile away because there’s nowhere closer to your home to park, it becomes, frankly, a pain in the bottom.

When we had a dedicated specialist cheese shop open, it was clear things had changed for good.

That lovely little summer festival we once had saw so many people flock to the streets you couldn’t actually walk on the pavements any more; the peaceful beach became a swarm of people.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge Whitstable its success. It was always a smashing little place. What’s more, it’s quite entitled to cash in on that.

But actually living in a tourist destination where the only people who could afford to live there were DfLs disproved the ‘you’ll never want to leave’ piece of advice I’d been given.

With a growing family, we couldn’t even stay in the town if we wanted to. Its new-found popularity sent property prices soaring to ludicrous levels. We bailed out and moved east.

So last weekend I returned for the first time in eight years. As a tourist. Albeit one who used the train.

The harbour is now almost unrecognisable (not helped, I fully appreciate by a fire which ripped through that seafood place). But it was a mass of people with a huge indoor food and drink centre where once there was just a little industry. The single biggest sign, surely, of its transformation into a tourist-serving town.

Wine bars and craft ale pubs had sprung up – nestling among the boutiques which had already started to arrive before we fled. Needless to say, there was not an empty parking space to be seen. And I had become what I often used to tut about – a Whitstable tourist.

Whitstable is still a lovely place and, for a day out, it made for a fun excursion, so I can completely see its popularity. I’m just pleased I don’t live there anymore – especially when I notice that the price we paid for a house there in 1999 is today comfortably eclipsed by the price of a beach hut.