Travel: Learn how to do the rudeness rumba and enjoy the beach

For most visitors to the Gambia, relaxing by the sea means striking the balance between minimal civility and blatant bad manners.

LET US start by putting the boot in. Some tour operators who fly to the Gambia, a charming strip of West Africa that almost slices Senegal in two, do little for the tourists they bring by the plane-load and next to nothing for the sleepy country and its gentle people that has played host to them for so long.

Most of those who visit the Gambia hardly leave their beachside hotels and never discover what the country has to offer. Why? Because they are frightened. Holiday reps imply that indepedent exploration of the Gambia is not safe, and that people leaving the hotel without an escort are at risk from beach bums, hoodlums and goodness knows what else.

It is rubbish, of course, but it's convenient rubbish. It means the tourists get to open their wallets only in the expensive restaurants and bars of the hotel. Even the souvenir-sellers are bussed in, rather than risk a tourist getting out. The tourists spend their days beside the pool in well-tended gardens and their nights taking in the Gambian version of Western entertainment (songs, somersaults and slapstick, all delivered at deafening volume).

This is not unpleasant, let it be said. Starting from Gatwick, you can be stretched out on your sun lounger under a thatched umbrella on the clean sand, sniffing the warm breeze off the Atlantic, in about five hours. The Gambia lies on the same longitude as Greenwich, so there is no time difference and no jet lag. The beach runs north and south uninterrupted to the horizon, the climate at this time of year is sunny and hot by day, balmy at night, and the tourist hotels are spacious, comfortable and sympathetically designed. The sea is warm and mostly calm, but with occasional rollers that would not disgrace a Cornish surfing-beach (boards can be hired). There are cheerful women selling fruit, children selling cakes and men selling trinkets, drugs ...and their bodies.

You see the men jogging along the beach in the early morning, doing press- ups and exercises. Later you see the occasional fellow cavorting in the surf with a white woman, or stretched out on a sun lounger with a partner twice his age. This "reverse" sex tourism is worrying Gambians - especially the Imams, the local priests, who, with increasing frequency, are finding themselves being asked to marry young Gambians to middle-aged white women.

So, even if you never leave your hotel, your holiday will not be dull. But it would be a pity because there is much else to enjoy. Gambia does not have the beauty of Uganda, or the grandeur of Kenya or Tanzania; but it has the advantages of being small, safe, cheap and easy to get around. Most of those who travel up country via the river, a must for birdwatchers, do not regret it.

What deters people from exploring are the bumsters - characters, including the beach joggers, who hang around the main hotels trying to befriend tourists who they hope will buy them food, drink, presents ...or a wedding ring.

Dealing with the bumsters can be a trial. They count on the fact that it is polite to respond when spoken to, and once you respond and they have engaged you in conversation, they can be difficult to shake off. I spent one afternoon walking a full mile down the beach before finally getting rid of one particularly persistent bumster.

To be free in the Gambia, to walk anywhere day or night in complete safety, to be able to choose who you talk to and who you don't, to open your heart and your mind to a people who are warm, proud, sharp-witted and kind, you have to learn one simple trick - how to be rude.

I stayed for 10 days last December in the Novotel and after the first night - when I felt a little nervous walking alone up the pitch-black road outside the hotel - I mastered the trick. The road led across a swamp - a haven for birdwatchers by day - up a hill and to a crossroads, where I found a modest restaurant I liked, hidden under palm trees up a dusty lane.

The trick is politely but firmly to refuse contact. My stock response to all greetings became "Hello, how are yooou", accompanied by a brief wave of acknowledgement, but without breaking my step and avoiding eye contact. It worked and I was left in peace, serenely free to go where I chose.

The nightly walk across the swamp, often with a full moon casting deep shadows, was exhilarating. Men lounging by the entrance to restaurants would call to me and groups of women, on their way to the tourist bars, would giggle suggestively and hope for something more than their taxi fare home.

I was in the Gambia running a course for local journalists; one Sunday a group of them organised a picnic on the beach. The hotel guards, who are under instruction to keep locals from loitering round the hotel guests, eyed our group suspiciously.

It made one of our party, a glamorous local TV presenter, bristle with indignation. "I am not moving," she said. "This beach belongs to us." That is something of which the tour operators need reminding.