Budleigh Past and Present

Fairlynch trustee and former museum chairman Roger Sherriff, pictured above, tells me that he is looking forward to the big Budleigh event on Saturday 16 April in the Public Hall when there will be live music all evening along with food and drink from 6.00 pm until midnig ht.  Locally produced real ales, cider and wine will be on offer with a selection of Good Game’s award winning artisan sausages to buy for your supper, including a ‘Beer Bangers and Bands’ special banger! The double headliner concert features the local Folk, Roots Rock band ‘Sam Green and the Midnight Heist’ and R&B, Blues & Rockabilly band ‘Hucklebuck’ with Budleigh’s own Ian Briggs, supported by the ever popular Budleigh Ukulele Rat Pack, with Budleigh duo Savoy and Exmouth’s Poppy Freya to open the night from 6.00 pm. As well as all the fantastic live music, a mini real ale festival featuring se...

  There’s a limit to what you can do with the rest of the turkey after Christmas Day.  Catering for those seasonal massive family gatherings can also get a bit much for any cook. So it’s quite a relief to get away from loading and unloading the dishwasher for the umpteenth time and go for the occasional meal out.   And living by the sea as we do, it seemed only natural to impress our guests with a visit to The Premier Café, Budleigh’s only fish restaurant. We had a warm welcome from owners Simon and Liz Blissett: the complimentary dish of whitebait fillets and sweet potato balls was a nice touch and kept us occupied while we made our choice from an extensive menu.   I first came across Simon in March 2009 when he was cheerfully standing in a bucket of mushy peas on Budleigh High Street to raise money for Comic Relief on Red Nose Day.  I was so struck by the unusual sigh...

Talking of food, as I’ve done here it seems that quite a few Friends of Fairlynch Museum have been involved with the amazingly successful Food Festival. More festivals means more visitors to the town, which means more visitors to its museum, which means... well, we’re just pleased to be able to show off Budleigh Salterton and the Lower Otter Valley. I was asked recently if the Museum had any books of local fish recipes, and had to confess that I didn’t know of any.   But maybe, hiding in the Library is a handwritten cookbook, perhaps discovered long ago in the kitchen of Primrose Cottage, which was Fairlynch’s original name.   We certainly ought to have a first edition of the famous Book of Household Management written by Mrs Beeton, grandmother of a distinguished former Budleigh resident. Click here to read more.     The first Budleigh Salterton Food and Drink Festival in 2013 was so popular that the organisers decided to stage a one-day tast...