Non-partisan flags in the car park at Mevagissey suggest all Celts are welcome.....
and top of the perennial visitor favourites is good old local ice cream......
with the stormy weather in full swing the tiny harbour is packed with the local fishing fleet.....
time to visit Mevagissey's famous museum - free as well - but feel better by making a donation on the way out.......
St Ives artist Borlase Smart at work in this pen and in wash depiction of Mevagissey's harbour.......
the museum's collection is drawn from all aspects of Cornish fishing community life......
and it seems foreign fleets in local waters are nothing new.......
in those old pipe smoking days......
there's a good example of a basket of lines - these are still used by a handful of boats when fishing for conger eel today......
there's an example of a net making machine, for many years in the homes of Cornish pilchard fishermen their children would be expected to 'make' so many rows of mesh before they were allowed out to play - here's more information provided by Nick Howell, curator of the now sadly closed Pilchard Museum.....
"Thought you'd like to know that the "net making machine" photo that you have in Meva is in fact a Norsel making machine or as the Cornish often called it, " an 'orsel maker" .
Norsels, 'orsels etc were the twine that separated a pilchard/herring net from the head rope. The head rope itself would consist of a left and a right turned rope tied back to back with their twists opposite to each other and with the cork floats in between. This was to stop the net curving, due to the natural twist of a rope, when in the water.
The Norsel machine twisted a few pairs of smaller twine in one hit, each pair only 12" to 18" long, back to back so that, again the natural twist of the twine would not curve in the water".........
next to the Museum is John Moore's boat builders, Britannia IV and Britannia V were built by the yard.......
Mevagissey is world famous in angling circles for the killer bass lure, the Red Gill invented by Alex Gill in 1968 and more bizarrely for being the first conurbation in the Britain with electric street lights.......
perfect for baking pasties, a Cornish version of the pizza oven known as a 'clone' oven, which were set into the wall of the large granite fireplaces found in most Cornish cottages.......
out in the harbour the age-old seaside pastime of crab catching continues.......
even though it is low water.......
which means the boats are dried out.......
looks like the red mullet are going to be on local menus soon......
gales mean the Mevagissey Ferry is not able to do its Fowey run today.........
all hands make light work when it comes to scrubbing off below the waterline and anti-fouling the hull......
once a sea of masts........
though there's no sign of fins on the menu.......
another trawler with a voracious appetite for fish.......
the Still Waters is taking advantage of the bad weather to go through her gear......
the fish market at Meva caters for a fleet of much diversity.......
one of many in the village........
the cliff road heads straight out to sea.
