Well, I’ve had a fantastic weekend at Tarbert Seafood Festival, along with family: it’s been really busy, really fun, and filled with eating, drinking, laughing and having a wonderful time!

The picture above shows just some of the fresh seafood caught and sold locally, in our wonderful fishing village: langoustines, spider crab, brown crab and lobster, just to name a few. We were also inundated with wonderful scallops, squat lobster, mackerel, velvet crabs and lots of other tasty treats.

The weather was simply fantastic- glorious sunshine and warm. The village was busy with both locals and tourists, milling around, browsing and shopping from many of the fantastic stalls, including crafts, home baking, fresh and cooked seafood, home decor, handmade toiletries and fun stalls like ‘splat the rat’ and ‘play your cards right’.

Would you like to see some of the fantastic stalls?

You can see some of the other fantastic seafood we feasted on in my earlier post. Deee-lish! Fresh, straight from the loch!

There was a Seafood Queen accompanied by her Seafood Princesses:

And a wonderful parade, led by the Mid Argyll Pipe Band; with floats: this year’s theme was ‘the Wild West’ which was fantastic!

There were wonderful cooking demonstrations, which were really interesting:

My brother started bidding for a box of fresh seafood in the auction, much to the horror of my sister-in-law: not because she didn’t want it, but because they weren’t heading home for another three days!

I had three favourite stalls this year: one was the Spingbank Whisky stall, where I sampled the Old Raj gin, which is flavoured with saffron. It was so delicious that I bought a bottle which will last me for about one night some time:

My next favourite stall was the Arbroath Smokies, which were absolutely delicious:

And then there was the ‘guess the number of midgies in a jar’ being run by Tarbert Academy Parent Association. How many would you guess are in the jar?

My guess was 167,600,000. Turns out that the answer was 148,000,000! And- I was closest! Woo hoo! I won!

Here’s my prize:

We finished off the evening with some ice cream sundaes from the cafe:

Sunday saw the arrival of more family, ans the day started early with a dip in the hot tub and a wee beer:

It was a scorcher!

Doesn’t the village look great in the sunshine?

The main event for the Sunday is ‘Beer on the Pier’, with bands playing at the Fish Quay, and beer, soft drinks and ice cream for sale. We had a fantastic time, listening to The Democrats and a Steps tribute band 😉

Of course, it was also the Final of Wimbledon, so we kept an eye on the score, and watched the final couple of games in the Islay Frigate. What an amazing result for Andy Murray!

Our evening was filled with fun, laughter, good food and good company: we watched the tennis highlights and then, at around 11.30pm we had a power cut! But we continued to celebrate by candlelight, which was fantastic!

Day three has been a little more subdued, but it has involved a lovely 6k walk to Shell Beach and back:

Can you see the jellyfish in the first picture?

We’ve said goodbye to our visitors,  but before we did, we made sure that some of them signed up for the Perth Kilt Run 🙂

We’re now relaxing in the garden, after the busy weekend:

Normal running routine will resume tomorrow, albeit probably slower due to the short break and warm temperatures 🙂

Roll on next year’s festival- I can’t wait!