New annual festival will celebrate local sardines

The Cornish Sardine Festival will take place on Saturday and Sunday

A town in Cornwall is to hold the first of a new annual festival celebrating the sardines its fishermen catch locally.

The Cornish Sardine Festival will take place in Newlyn on Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 19:00 BST.

Organiser Gus Caslake, from Mousehole, said there would be food and local bands playing live music.

He said: "It's just the start of our season so it's a good chance to sort of celebrate what we're catching locally in Cornwall. We fish from July until March, that's the season, and now is a great time for catching sardines and eating sardines. So the sardine festival is a chance to celebrate that."

Sardine pizza

He added: "It's our chance really to eat some of the fresh beautiful sardines we are catching in Cornwall right this minute."

The festival will be centred around the harbourside restaurant Argoe, which will provide food for the event, as well as three other sites in the harbour.

Mr Caslake said there would be "sardine three ways", including barbecued sardine, sardine pizza, "which looks absolutely fantastic", as well as "a cold dish with sardines".

He added there would also be three fishing boats on site.

"We're going to do tours of the fishing vessels and the tours are going to be carried out by the skippers themselves."

There would also be an exhibition in Trelawney Fish, which would include details about the heritage and the nutritional value of sardines "so people can learn a little bit more", he added.

"Part of what we want to do is obviously celebrate sardines but it's an educational piece for the general public, sardines are caught so close to shore so it's probably one of the easier fisheries to observe," he said.