Community Barbecue on Mothecombe Beach

The Flete Estate played host to a wonderful Community Barbecue on Mothecombe Beach this weekend. Holbeton Primary School was celebrating the launch of its new logo, and asked the village to join them for the party. Saturday dawned grey and drizzly, and the huge bonfire took some encouragement to get going, fueled by some of the props from the Holbeton Players’ production of “Oliver”, including strangely, a coffin and a papier maché owl in a cage!! But, undaunted, the barbecue was lit, the weather cleared, dozens of people arrived, and the party got going to the accompaniment of Jonny Garstang’s accordion band. The Fathers migrated to the bonfire, the children amused themselves pottering about in the stream and digging and the mothers chatted. Just a typical beach barbecue in England really…

We haven’t had a bonfire like that since the Queen’s Jubilee, when we hosted a wonderful raft race down the river Erme, and finishing on Mothecombe beach. About twenty craft of varying degrees of sea-worthiness were paddled for a couple of hours out round Owen’s Point against an incoming tide and then tumbled through the surf to come ashore on Mothecombe. The crews were exhausted, but in high spirits, and ready for a warm up by the bonfire. It was a great week of celebrations in Holbeton, and not likely to be repeated for a long time.