Another Broadstairs Festival – not Folk but Food.

Strange as it may seem, I had a vague plan for the Saturday after all those days of doing very little and that was to do with another Festival that was taking place in Broadstairs, indeed it was taking place about five minutes walk from where I was staying. Instead of Folk this Festival is dedicated to Food and has been going for a number of years now. Indeed, it seems to get bigger every year.

Kent is known as the “Garden of England” and with good reason as it is an absolute treasure trove of produce from the orchards with the associated ciders and perries to the hops and the beer they produce to excellent lamb, cheeses and all manner of fruit and veg. Add in such seafood delicacies as Dover sole and Whitstable oysters, to name but two and you really cannot go wrong food wise. On my five minute walk from bedroom to festival site I actually passed the restaurant which has very recently been awarded the first Michelin star in Thanet and which I will deal with in a future post.

If you are a regular reader all this will explain the rather cryptic message I left in the last sentence of the previous post about napkins, knives and forks. I decided to go on the Saturday and was glad I did not wait for the Sunday for reasons I shall explain in due course and it was absolutely packed as the images attest even though the weather was anything but glorious. I have actually been here before and sat outside drinking in a T-shirt. All this in early October, it was great but sadly no T-shirts this year and I was well wrapped up.

Cider, cider everywhere nor yet a drop to drink!

I have to say that the Festival was very frustrating for me this year for a couple of reasons. Firstly, due to my medication I could only stand and look longingly into the numerous beer and cider tents, the Gin Palace, the champagne bar and even at the miniature prosecco wagon you can see in one of the images. OK, I am not really much of a one for drinking prosecco except mixed with Aperol and soda in my mates bar in Rome but it is the principle of the thing.

My meagre purchases.

The second reason for my frustration was that much as I love where I am staying in the Wrotham, the sum total of my cooking facilities is a kettle. OK, I had cutlery and a tin opener with me as I always carry such things for emergencies but it somewhat limited my choice of purchase. What could I possibly do with a lovely rack of Kentish lamb for example? In the end I limited myself to a couple of excellent pieces of locally produced cheese and a bag each of red and yellow cherry tomatoes on the vine from the massive agrocentre called Thanet Earth which I have mentioned before and who had an extensive stall. I was glad to see that they were selling their produce in paper as opposed to plastic which was a good sign.  I’ll show you what I did with the toms in a future post.  I also bought a couple of pieces of cheese from the Cheesemakers of Canterbury

I do like the way they name all the “roads” on the site with local place names as you can see in one of the images. I picked this one as the Festival site is right beside Louisa Bay where there used to be a pub of that name that I played a gig on the first year I played Folk Week which is a very long time ago. There is a block of flats there now which seems to be par for the course in Thanet, indeed in the whole of the UK.

As I was taking this image, I heard my name being called and it was my mate Jo who is one of the Festival Directors. She is the lady who used to own what is now the Magnet micropub, formerly the Reef, and who I have known for many years. I met her about a week later and she told me that she had one of those wristbands that tell you how far you have walked amongst other things like the time of High tide in Cape Town or whatever and that she had walked something ludicrous like 12 miles that day. I told her to cancel her subscription to the gym!

Broadstairs Food Festival.

Jo was not the only person I was chatting to as it seems I know an awful lot of people round Broadstairs and they all happened to be at the Festival at the same time I was. It probably took me twice as long as it should have done to get round the site as I kept bumping into people, many of whom I had not seen for a long time so there was a lot of catching up to do.

I took myself considerably less than Jo’s 12 miles back to the Wrotham for another quiet night and was sitting minding my own business when a lovely dog decided to just make itself at home on my feet which sported only a pair of flip flops (thongs). I thought dogs were meant to have a keen sense of smell but apparently not. Try as I might, I could not get the beast to turn round even slightly so I could get anything other than a back of the head image and it is not centred properly but I quite like it.
Upstairs then once again to my bed, leaving my purchases by the slightly open window by way of refrigeration and off to sleep.

The next post will be another several days rolled into one as I really had slipped into a very comfortable routine of doing very little but I’ll let you know as soon as anything good comes up so stay tuned and spread the word.

Author: Fergy.

Hello there. I am a child of the 50's, now retired and had been enjoying travelling pre-virus. Now I am effectively under house arrest. Apart from travelling, I love playing music (guitar, vocals and a bit of percussion) as the profile pic suggests and watching sport, my playing days are long over. I read voraciously, both fiction and nonfiction I'll read just about anything although I do have a particular interest in military history of all periods. I live alone in fairly central London where I have been for over 30 years since leaving Northern Ireland which was the place of my birth. I adore cooking and I can and do read recipe books and watch food programmes on TV / online all day given half a chance. View all posts by Fergy.