Around 10,000 attend 2024 Lymington Seafood Festival at Bath Road Recreation Ground

LYMINGTON Seafood Festival organisers described a “fantastic atmosphere” as around 10,000 people attended the event over the weekend.

This year, the three-day festival, held on Bath Road Recreation Ground, saw the addition of a stage featuring top local chefs and a cookery school run by TV presenter and food writer Chris Bavin and Lime Wood’s Luke Holder.

“It was great to see people enjoying our brilliant local chefs in action, who found the time to join us and show off their skills and pass on a few tips for all the festival foodies,” said organiser Richard Nowell.

“Host Chris Bavin was on top form and I’d like to pay a special thanks to the team at Balmer Lawn Hotel for their support both with sponsorship, and sending down one of their top chefs Callum Jellicoe to take the stage and deliver a couple of cookery classes.

“The cookery school, brilliantly led by Jen Williams of Naked Jam and her team, made its debut this year, and it was lovely to see people of all ages donning an apron and enjoying creating something new.”

Richard added: “I know from chatting to the food traders they all had a great weekend, with many starting to sell out by Sunday afternoon. I thought we had the best range of seafood yet.

“We’d like to pay a big thanks to Lymington & Pennington Town Council for providing the venue, and New Forest Cottages and Lymington Gin for their support.”

Festival-goers enjoyed a wide range of mouthwatering street food his year from around 75 stalls, serving up a variety of fresh seafood including teriyaki prawns, Nordic flammlachs salmon, dressed crab, lobsters, oysters, scallops, monkfish and cod cheek tacos.

Ensuring the event was as sustainable as possible was one of Richard’s key aims, with recycling and working with local stallholders and suppliers a top priority.

Entertaining the crowds were 14 bands and artists, performing on the music stage over the three days with a blend of blues, folk, soul and pop.

Headlining on Friday evening was a Fleetwood Mac tribute, with nine-piece Fat Cat Soul the main act on Saturday, and acclaimed Decatonics closing the weekend’s festivities with ska and reggae on Sunday.

This year, event organisers chose the RNLI’s Lymington branch as their charity partner.

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