I Love The Lizard, Cornwall

This is my 100th blog post.  Wow.  I was delighted to write my first piece for the Guardian about great places to eat on a budget in North Devon.  Busy busy.  To celebrate I'm going to indulge in a couple of photos of one of my favourite places in the world: The Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall.  These places are all within about 10 miles of each other.

 This is The Lizard Point, the most southerly part of mainland England.  I met a friendly forager here who tempted us to nibble a couple of the local plants.  From this position there were about seven different wild edible plants within four feet of us.

 This is Mullion harbour

Cadgwith

The archetypally Cornish fishing village of Cadgwith.  Beautiful thrift in the foreground.

It is beautiful, rugged, remote and  just a very relaxing place to be.  

I have previously described some of my favourite things to eat there including the sinfully divine Hope's Cinnamon and Pecan Buns, Polpeor Cafe and Ann's Pasties, but actually you can't beat a little rustic picnic featuring Hope's gruyere and cumin bread, spiced pears, Helford Blue cheese (plus Tesco olives, Cornwall haven't got around to producing those....yet)

Sticky Pecan Big Buns from Cornwall - Hope's Bread

These are worthy of a blog post all to themselves.  I'm not supposed to eat nuts, so I picked them all off and passed them to my other half, so used my imagination to add them to the overall delight of these sticky, enormous, calorific, doughy wonderful delicacies.  Bearing no real resemblance to a French Pain aux Raisins, these little beauties have soft sticky thick toffee sandwiching the soft spiral together and then slightly harder, more toffee-apple crunchy bits in places.  £1 - total bargain - these are big buns! No wonder I put on weight when I visit Cornwall!

We were lucky enough to be in Cornwall at the right time for the Gweek Food and Craft Fair at Easter.  They seem to have one at Easter and one over the August Bank Holiday.  Next one is Bank Holiday Monday 29 August  2011.

 The village hall where it is held may be small, but it's packed with fantastic local food producers like Sargies (puds, meringues and lemon curd); Treveador Farm Dairy, producers of Helford White, possibly my favourite cheese in the world;  and the wonderful Hope's Bread.  Hope's produce can be found at most West Cornwall Farmer's Markets during the week and at other special events - see the website  Here's the lovely Hope of Hope's Bread who makes the splendid sticky cinnamon buns....oh and just a few different types of bread (the lavender and honey bread is yummy as toast, and the olive focaccia was the perfect accompaniment to lunch outside in the sun with a glass of wine):

All the producers were located within a few miles of Gweek, a small creekside village famous for its Seal Sanctuary (Top Tip: Use your Tesco Clubcard vouchers to pay for entry fees) and near the town of Helston.  See you there on August Bank Holiday!