Approaching “Fowey”:https://www.fowey.co.uk/ from Looe, we took narrow country roads to get to the ferry at Bodinnick. The ferry costs £5 per vehicle or £2 per person on foot. It is a smallish ferry holding less than a dozen vehicles. Once across the river we parked at the Old Station car park for £0.80/hr and walked along Passage Street, North and Fore Streets into town. It was a lovely sunny day and the setting is quite picturesque with Polruan across the Fowey River.
We had picked up a booklet in Looe about the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature that was on from May 11-19. There was a whole line up of talks, tours and entertainment at various venues in town. Also on was the Fowey Art Trail and Secret Gardens for 2018 but once we got there, none of us seemed in the mood for anything organized. It was a beautiful day and setting and we wandered around town checking out the sights and shopping trying to figure out where we were. The map included in the festival booklet was not much help. We seemed mesmerized by the view which kept drawing our attention. We came across the statue “Isla – Rook with a Book” as we wandered along towards the Esplanade. It is a huge crow sculpted by Gary and Thomas Thrussell and it holds a depiction of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” in its claw, hence the title. I do remember a visit to the Jamaica Inn in 1990, but other than reading “Rebecca” I’m not familiar with much of du Maurier’s work. I can imagine it would be very interesting for her fans to visit where she lived.
As we approached the Royal Fowey Yacht Club we met up with one of the festival organizers who told us the yacht club was open to the public for the festival and we could get refreshments there. It was also the home of the festival box office and Waterstones festival book shop. She also clarified the map for us; seems they forgot to include both ferries so no wonder it was confusing. There is a car ferry, which we arrived on, and there is a foot ferry and the map only shows the foot ferry. Once that was sorted, we managed to get our bearings.
The terrace of the yacht club provides gorgeous views across the river to Polruan and we decided to nab a table and have some scones and coffee. Sadly, though the festival organizer was friendly and helpful, the members of staff in the café were not. Only one young girl was trying to keep up with the extra work of non-members due to the festival and the chef was grumpy to say the least. We decided to take our custom elsewhere and were glad we did; “The Life Buoy”:https://www.silvertraveladvisor.com/review/restaurant/189936 was a delight.
