sea

Once a year the small town of Sidmouth in East Devon becomes the home of folk….

The Sidmouth Folk Festival has been running for 60 years. For one week it is normal to wear funny hats, bells on your knees and busk in the streets. We have been going to the festival for over 30 years.

There are food stalls.

TTlemonadeStand_waterfront1 ‘Texture used Waterfront1’

Music stands where you can buy anything from a tin whistle to an accordion.

TT_sidmouth_instruments

texture used kk_waterfront1 as a backdrop and Kim’s template and brush. Also a brush by Katie Pertiet

Meeting old friends and making new ones….

There was a lot of this….

TTsidmouth_icecreams-1180727

And this…

TTsidmouth_dancer_on_wall-1180745

Some interesting costumes

TT_sidmouthdancers

Crafters….

TTsidmouth_trader-1180731

And of course the seafront, which is lined with traders and dance teams all playing their instruments, shouting out instructions and generally having a wonderful time…

TTsidmouth_seafront-1180857

This is a collage of some of the wonderful people you meet along the sea front. The dance team The Cornish Wreckers a dance side from Cornwall, and a young girl playing some amazing fiddle ….

This is only a tiny peep into the wonderful world of the folk festival…..

TTsidmouth_template

Mark and I are going to another festival at the end of August I hope the weather will be kind to us so I have another opportunity to showcase some more wonderful artists…

Linking up with Kim for Texture Tuesday and Helen for A Weekend Walk…..

Thanks for visiting……

7b049-vivsig

“If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,

Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.

Watch the wall my darling while the Gentleman go by”.

~ Rudyard Kipling A Smuggler’s Song

A week or so ago Mark and I were invited to stay a few days with friends who had rented a house in Polperro in Cornwall. Polperro is a harbour town in the far south west of England. It is a tourist trap in the Summer, full of holiday makers and unfortunately many of the houses and cottages are holiday homes, very few locals live by the water a sign of the times in this part of the world where unemployment is high and very seasonal.

Polperro has a long history – it dates back to the 13th century and certainly smuggling took place in the 18th century when duty on many goods were increased due to war with Britain’s neighbours.

In 1798 a Polperro boat called the Lottery was involved in an incident in which a Customs Officer was killed. One of the crew, Tom Potter, was later tried for murder at the Old Bailey and executed. As a result, the smuggling trade that had once thrived in Polperro began to diminish as Revenue officials determined to put a stop to it.

The houses are tightly packed and visitors are no longer permitted to take cars into the village and have to leave them in the main car park to the north of the village and walk the half mile length of the village to the harbour. I can speak from experience that the streets are so steep and narrow that we had to pull our wing mirrors in to drive down to the house.

Commercial fishing still takes place with twelve boats regularly operating looking to catch scallops, crabs and so on.
I had great fun walking along the harbour to get some shots of a working harbour.