Events at Clovelly 

Keeping the history alive 

The Events that are organised in the village are designed to celebrate all aspects of the village and its history.

We hold historical events to clear the bad spirits from the village before Easter each year. This is called the Lentsherd Festival. Children for 100’s of years have run down the cobbles dragging items on strings to make a noise and to throw the bad spirits into the sea.

We have a Seaweed Festival that is the only one in the UK. This celebrates all that is great about seaweed, the amazing diversity of its use in herbal remedies and cooking recipes.  The Lobster and crab feast helps to promote the lobster and crab suitable fishing within Clovelly’s waters.

We have our waters stocked each year. They stock with many hundreds of baby lobsters by The National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow. This helps keep the seabed clean and encourages other molluscs to thrive. The Herring festival is the other main event that Clovelly runs in terms of food festivals and takes place in November as the “silver darlings” start to come along our coast. 

Then there are other annual events:

The Lundy Gig row takes local teams on a race to Lundy and back. This starts from the quay and takes the teams two days, there and back.  Consequently you can imagine there are many tired rowers on the quay by the end of the day on their return in need of a drop of Devon’s amber nectar. The famous Maritime festival, celebrating the rich maritime history of Clovelly. 

The RNLI Lifeboat weekend in August is a celebration of the Clovelly lifeboat and its volunteer crew support. It has a host of different attractions along the quay and the Lifeboat House is open to visitors. Clovelly Lectures take place twice a year featuring a host of speakers covering current affairs.