Driving from town to town by Cornwall, we came across the Fish Festival which occurs for fishmongers and their friends on August Bank Holiday yearly in a fishing town Newlyn, one of maybe top ten villages in Cornwall. The Festival promised some bright colours on the sea theme, the freshiest haul from Atlantics and a variety for an urban girl's eyes activity. So why not?
Handily occupying two town piers and space in between, the festival seemed to match to the town where it was on. As I have read later from the news, this year Fest was not the biggest - thanks to English weather! But. Zero parking spaces in the city and around, and cloze to zero ability to gat out from the central fishing pavilion, at noon! far from the activity peak time!
Festival offered everything what the coastal city lives with: the fishmonger of the year challenge and fish cooking lessons, sea sports competitions and charity projects, crafts and creative amateur performances.
And, certainly, fish. Loads of fish and fishes, and seafood. All under-the-sea inhabitants brought to the Festival, yet were rowing the ocean this early morning, and probably were making their own out-of-the-festival plans, - the big central fish display showed a note proudly saying that all catch was brought at 9 am today, right for the start of the Festival.
By entering the main pavilion, I saw big crabs, and dreamboat lobsters. As I have a soft spot for the lobsters, the idea to pick one from the Festival has visited me immediately. Except that a walk together with a clawish friend through the pavilion did not look that nice. Answering my doubts, the saleslady informed me that lobsters are 'flying off', and she would recommend to buy it now. By the way, they could keep it on the ice for me. I have chosen the biggest and the nicest one, and was given the number 136. Lobster was sent onto the ice, and myself - into the crowd, to discover how the english fishermans world lives.
What to say, it lives quite interestingly and tasty. The pavilion displayed the competition for the fishmonger of the year where representatives demonstrated skills on how do flense fish nicely and quickly. Or one can learn how to cook fish from the best Cornish chefs. Fresh raw and cooked fish and seafood was presented just there too, in all its kinds and variaties: trout, the most tender scallops, cray fish, calmari, prawns of all sizes, hake, salmon, sole, even a small shark, and fishes the names of which I could not even find in my translator (and did not risk to try!).
In the afternoon, the rain started. It was time to head to London (possibly also rainy). And there was that to get out of the friendly pavilion is so much harder than to get into. The rain and late Sunday did their job.
Hardly we managed to get to the stall with lobsters at the entrance. With? It was some time ago when the lobsters were on the stall. Now it was only possible to find there just a couple of crabs, and a lot of ice with lemon lithes and parsley. The saleslady was right. And I was happy with number 136 in my wallet.
P.S. Our friend lobster didn't manage to see London. He was eaten on the rare of the car, under the drizzle next to the "No Picnic" sign after just having being left Devon. Yummy!!!
P.S. Our friend lobster didn't manage to see London. He was eaten on the rare of the car, under the drizzle next to the "No Picnic" sign after just having being left Devon. Yummy!!!
