Clovelly’s Annual Herring Festival
Road Trips Foodies wandering the United Kingdom next month might want to pencil in a detour to the northern coast of Devon, England. The Herring Festival takes place at the harbor in Clovelly from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. November 15, 2009, a city that once depended on the harvest of these “silver darlings” from the sea. The festival will feature herring dishes, local cider and wine.
Maritime historian, Mike Smylie, will be there with his Kipperland exhibition and smoking fresh kippers and bloaters in his smokehouse. There will also be great traditional shanty singers, The Singing Fishwives, and lots of stalls of food and more. In fact, the fall travel supplement in last year’s Guardian named it one of the five best autumn food festivals in the United Kingdom.
This year, the event honors the 50th anniversary of the North Devon Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The AONB covers 171 square kilometers of coastal Devon from Marsland Mouth on the Cornish border to Combe Martin on the boundary of Exmoor National Park.