It seems to me that it is only as the dust settles, the tents come down, crowds, chefs, stall holders go home that the really powerful images of the Food Festival take hold and solidify in memory.
From the Patrons and Sponsors Reception on Tuesday evening, to the final closing moments on Sunday there was never a dull moment. Surely this was the Best Festival Ever. Yes, I know, we do say it year after year but you must agree, this year was truly spectacular.

Wednesday’s Food Quiz at Alf’s was a riot. Gina Carter stood in at the last minute as a very colourful Quiz Master turning the evening from huge fun into total hilarity. I’m prejudiced of course, having been on the winning table!

The Market Place became impassable, the Embankment too, just crammed with visitors trying to get to the amazing array of deliciousness on show.

Stall after stall weighed down with produce and fabulous street food. It was as good if not better than any market across the Channel, and I’ve been to a few.

On Thursday afternoon Royal Avenue Gardens was transformed into a fantastic children’s Street Party.

Crumpets were toasted, Eggy Bread consumed, Ice cream cornets to the ready and Our Chairman did a quality control check testing and tasting; the scones with jam and clotted cream were approved, I think.

Beer arrived somewhat bizarrely in the hands of pirates but even that didn’t stop the celebrity chefs downing a pint.

There were Lunches and Dinners every day at all the fabulous restaurants that Dartmouth is blessed with, and there are a lot! There were extravaganzas in the Flavel, Cheffy demo’s in the Kitchen Theatres,

Wine Tasting, Beer Tasting, Dartmouth Caring Book launch, a Pasty Competition, Young Chef Competition. And there was Brunch; did I read that one right “Dartmouth Landladies, David, Kit and Tony”. Ah well, by Sunday I had done three mornings in the Aga kitchen with a succession of amazing chefs so maybe I missed something here, but I’m told it was another triumph!

The Festival is of course the termination of a year’s very hard work and immaculate planning by a dedicated team working flat out. It doesn’t Just Happen. Without doubt David and Holly Jones have a lot to answer for! Their unfailing energy and enthusiasm ignites the same and more in a wonderful committee who leave no stone unturned in their efforts to make each year bigger and better. The whole town tips in; local residents, chefs, hoteliers, restauranteurs, farmers, producers all join together pulling out all the stops time and time again.
This year was indeed the Best Ever……………………until next year

Sally Vincent:-www.rainingsideways.com

Just back from the beautiful islands of Shikoku and Shodoshima in the Inland Sea of Japan, I look out once more at the magnificence of the Dart, the sea beyond and think fish. In Japan we ate fish of every sort shape and size. Some we recognised, some new to us, some cooked, some pickled, some dried and of course, the greatest treat of all, the fabulous sashimi. Straight from the sea, finely sliced and beautifully arranged it was served with hot wasabi mustard, soy sauce and pickled vegetables, followed by Japanese rice and miso soup. Each meal was an amazing gastronomic adventure, always exciting and always so delicious!

So excited was I that I went straight to see Mark Lobb at his depot in The Old Telephone Exchange, Stoke Fleming. Mark, fish and game merchant, has been trading in Dartmouth Market and delivering fish in the South Hams since 1982; he’s been in the trade for thirty five years as was his father before him. There’s not much he doesn’t know about fish.

And now he’s on the move! In the next few months he will be in his own shop in the beautifully refurbished Dartmouth market. Watch this space!

I showed him my photos of sashimi. Maybe, I said, he would like to become our very own Dartmouth Sushi Master! After all, our local fish is every bit as good and fresh as any we ate in Japan. I know that for a fact because a while ago I was lucky enough to go with Mark to the fish market in Brixham.

At 3.50 a.m. as the first birds were just beginning to sing I dressed as instructed in the required fish market uniform, jeans, tea shirt, sweater, white coat, baseball hat and Wellington boots. I set off with some trepidation. The fish quay is not open to the public and is made up of a close nit group of fish traders unused to new faces, particularly a woman! “We all grew up together; they’ll look at you and wonder if you’re some sort of Government official. Stay near me.” I will I thought!

The early morning air was sharp despite the heat of recent days. Dawn was breaking as we parked on the quay and the fishing boats, all shapes and sizes were emerging from the night shadows. We walked into the huge hall where men in similar “uniform” milled around crates of fish. At first I was surprised at the inactivity.  A slow drift round each catch; crates were peered at, fish was picked up, smelt, thrown back, crates kicked, I soon realised the idea was to look as disinterested as possible

Boats had come in the previous evening and all night a team had sorted gutted, cleaned and crated the fish; octopus are separated out so the ink doesn‘t contaminate the rest of the catch, scallops “a special market” The rest of the catch is sorted and crated by the name of the boat: quantities varied so much, masses of crates from some boats and just a few from others. Beamers, boats that go to sea for up to five days at a time, had come in that night. But high tides and exceptionally hot weather meant catches were low. There would be no more in untill the end of the week so the next few days would rely on the short haul boats that go out for the night only. How sparse it all looked.

I have read so much about the troubles of the fishing industry and here it was before my eyes. So many traders trying to buy so little fish, no wonder they try to look casual to keep the price down. Gradually I began to understand what was happening; the auction began. As I watched I began to notice a twitch here, a wave of a hand there, an eyebrow raised as the price moved up. It was incredibly hard to see who is bidding for what; all part of the skill, of course. These old hands have it down to a fine art.

My mind began to drift back over all I have read about the history of fish and fishing. Romans had amazing food markets, they even knew how to make ice. Tanker ships brought the live fish to shore. Huge fishponds were fed by the aqueducts that bought water to the cities. The still live fish were carried to market on carts in huge water tanks. I have seen the same in modern Japan. A lorry driving through Tokyo on its way to deliver fresh fish to restaurants, the whole vehicle one huge aquarium with fish swimming  round for all to see.

In the Middle Ages the Pope made eating fish on Friday’s compulsory, Lent and Saints Days too. Fish was supposed to cool the blood unlike red meat. Trade grew up between north and south. Fish was dried in Scandinavia with salt from North Germany. Salt fish came to be the staple food stuff of the poor across Europe. Feudal Lords gave fishing rights on their lakes and ponds for fresh fish as privileges to the rich and powerful.

Louis XV offered 9000 francs to anyone who could find a way to bring fresh Sea Bream to Paris and a little later in 1775 Louis XV1 first reduced, then abolished certain taxes to enable the poor to eat salt fish in Lent. Unfortunately no one remembered this when they cut off his head in 1789!

Our own fishing tradition goes way back too, it wasn‘t until the 1880’s that fishing became industrialised.  Some two hundred years earlier Henry V111 had forbade the purchase of cod from foreigners in an effort to encourage the English to fish the abundance in Newfoundland. Settlers went there with the fisherman, shipwrights and merchants whose  descendants are there to this day……

All the while my camera was clicking. I was determined not to miss a thing. “Who are you?” “Would you like a coffee?”  “ Who are you with?” .Mark was right. Who on earth is this woman in our midst. I just smiled and said “I‘m with him over there, and I’m writing about fish”. Some moved on and others talked about the difficulties facing the industry now. Traders and fisherman alike complain about time spent wrestling with a mass of regulations.  They talk of the European Fisheries Policy, fishing quotas, off shore limits, boats called “rule Beaters“, satellite communication, how it was in the old days.

Gradually all the crates are sold, fork lift trucks load lorries and vans. I jump out of their frenzied path. Mark goes to load ice on the quay from the huge ice maker. The boats fill their holds with ice from here before they go to sea.

There is a very fine balance between over and under fishing. Both take their toll on the fish stocks. It seems like common sense not to catch immature fish or take the breeding stock from the sea but sadly that common sense is often lost due to competition and a fight for survival. The waste is terrible too. It is said that one third of the catch is thrown back for one reason or another. That is some forty million tons a year: fish, dolphins and sea birds destroyed.  Add to that the changes in sea temperature. The warming process has accelerated dramatically since the 1960s bringing different varieties of fish to our waters. Off Plymouth the sea temperature is ½ a degree warmer than it was 100 years ago and research shows the fish species are changing and fish are generally getting smaller. Global warming and modern fishing policy is having a profound effect on marine life and, if we’re not careful, the world will soon be deprived of one of its greatest sources of protein.  We must remember that fish is the world’s last great wild food resource.

Sally Vincent http://www.rainingsideways.com">

Watch this space as Dartmouth prepares for the biggest and best ever Festival.

If recent committee meetings are anything to go by it will be even bigger, better, more vibrant than ever. Meetings resonate with energy; ideas tumble over each other, so much noise and laughter, everyone jostling to be heard, the chairman struggles to control his astonishingly creative, unruly mob.

Fergus Henderson will be here this year with Mitch Tonks, of course, Valentine Warner, Mark Hix, Henry Dimbleby and many, many more. There’s the Children’s Festival too and the Quiz, Young Chef Competition, South West Wine Challenge, Dartmouth Caring’s Cook Book launch.  There’s the Market Place packed with exhibitors and producers selling deliciousness, Cookery Theatres to show us how; a Sunday Brunch in the Flavel Centre. And that’s just the start of it

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The Crab Street Festival on August 7^th set the scene perfectly. An amazing Three Hundred and Eighty people sat down to Devon Crab in the sunshine and sometime gale force wind on the Embankment. The wine flowed, the crab was sublime served with mayo and salad and accompanied by heavenly bread from Manna from Devon. Pudding followed; Holly Jones’s now very famous and, oh, so delicious Chocolate Brownies and ice cream!

The Mayor was there and “Corporation”, our very own celebrities, magician, musicians; the Embankment buzzing!  It was a very good omen for October.

So why is there a Dartmouth Food Festival in this small inaccessible town at the mouth of a river; a little town with an extraordinary history, a town that has managed to re-invent itself in a quite remarkable way time and again across the centuries?

Dartmouth sits at the mouth of the River Dart, a river which rises five hundred and fifty metres above sea level on the acidic peat bogs high up on Dartmoor. The water tumbles down fed by numerous little rivulets and streams until it becomes a respectable river flowing through grassland and heath, farmland and pasture to Totnes. Here it becomes an estuary, flooding a ria valley formed in the last Ice Age by rising sea levels and sinking land. It becomes tidal, freshwater mixing with salt from the sea. Oak trees dominate the shore.

Dart is the Celtic word for “many oaks”. Dartmouth sits at its mouth, so apt a name for a town with a history of ships and shipping and a story dominated by the sea. It was not until 1823 that it became accessible by land for wheeled vehicles. Up until that time only pack horses or ponies could manage the steep descent to the town and the Quay; water was the motorway of the town.

In the 12^th century Dartmouth was the fourth most important town in Devon after Exeter, Plymouth and Barnstaple. The First Crusade left in 1147 and the Third in 1190. Dartmouth was already meeting the needs of commercial shipping. Smith Street, Higher Street and Lower Street formed the town centre on the water’s edge; merchant houses and warehouses backed onto the river making it easy to load and unload cargoes straight from ships. Boats lay alongside for repairs and the quay side was a thriving marketplace, the earliest recorded in 1231. Plenty of fresh water flowed from the hills above the town filling conduits which were still in use in the 20^th century. The water supply made Dartmouth a popular place with brewers and vintners and in 1364 it received the Charter of Merchant Vintners increasing trade in cloth and herring as well as wine.

There were brewers, bakers, butchers and craftsmen. There was the pillory, stocks and a cucking stool in the waterside churchyard of St Saviours. Laws were plenty to dissuade the unscrupulous tradesman; a Millar must only have 3 hens and a cock in case he should feed client’s grain to his poultry. If he gave short weight he was fined for the first two offences then, if he offended again, he was into the pillory. A similar fate awaited the brewer who sold short measure. On his third offence it was into the cucking stool then into the pillory soaking wet; a nasty deterrent. And so on for the fishmonger and cook. Tavernier’s were forbidden to make their own wine and an Innkeeper who used his premises as a Brothel was simply expelled from the town.

The strength behind the success of the town for many years was the great merchant and shipmaster, Hawley 1340-1408. It was he who fortified the town with a great chain that could be cast across the mouth of the river thus giving the town the power to stop enemy ships entering or leaving. So impressed was Chaucer when he met Hawley while visiting Dartmouth in his role as customs officer on behalf of the King in 1373, that he is believed to have based his famous Schipman upon him in the Canterbury tales. Hawley’s achievements are legendry, mayor many times, a privateer of huge reputation and some say, possibly something of a pirate too. On his death the town mourned the loss of one of its greatest and began to decline.

But not for long, as the fishing trade increased so Dartmouth was to become famous for the Newfoundland fisheries. Sir Walter Raleigh, “a local”, described the fishery as “the mainstay of the West”. So important was it that the crews sailing to Newfoundland were exempt press-ganging into the Navy at times of war. The ships were away for half the year salting and drying the cod on board and trading it with goods from Spain, France and Portugal on their return en route to Dartmouth. As time passed fishing became more local and by the 18^th century Devon boats were sending fish to Bristol, Bath, Portsmouth, London and the Channel Islands. The fish was kept alive in huge tanks on board ship.

Gradually the town began to change. It is hard to imagine Victoria Road under water until the beginning of the 19th Centuary; crossing places at North Ford and South Ford uniting the two small towns of Hardness and Clifton which together formed Dartmouth. Drainage and land reclamation began in earnest. By the 1820’s Foss Street was dry land leading to the new Market Place. Wheeled vehicles began to come down the hill into the town at last. Local trade increased as farmers were able to bring more produce to market and supply local shops. Burgoyne’s the Butcher and Oldreive Brothers in Fairfax Place victualled the ships and fed the town. The display of poultry and game from the first floor of Oldreives was such that they employed staff all night to prevent “pilfering”.

This picture used with the kind permission of The Dartmouth Museum

And so the town swung into the 20^th then 21^st century. Small traders, Mr Shillibeare and Mr Cutmore the butchers, Crisp and Green the greengrocers, Dave Killer the Chemist, Cundells the Grocer, have all given way to the supermarkets. Chris McCabe now owns the only butchers and Jilly’s Farm Shop sells local produce every week day. High quality restaurants, cafes and pubs abound. The old bakery is gone but the fabulous patisserie, Saveurs has arrived from France. The old Market, now magnificently refurbished, still thrives: farmers and local food producers bring their produce to the town as they have done for centuries, then by boat, on pack horse or cart, now by car or van. The fishing fleet mostly trade from nearby Brixham now but the crabbers still come into the river and fresh fish is still available in abundance; local food producers are once more thriving and multiplying. Local food is valued once again. Times change, and as in the past, Dartmouth adjusts to the needs of the moment. Dartmouth Food Festival celebrates the multiplicity of a present  built upon hundreds of years of the past !

Sally Vincent www.rainingsideways.com

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