The Boatshed crew were recently visiting Brixham and we pulled in there to avoid bad weather. What a pleasant surprise, we haven’t visited Brixham for a couple of years and we found the whole experience great fun.

The first thing you notice when you come round Berry Head, particularly when you’re travelling from all points west, such as the Scillies, Fowey, Falmouth, etcetera, is the availability of 4G. Suddenly, the ship’s crew and the atmosphere brightened considerably when we realised we didn’t have to rush back to work because the poor connectivity that we had experienced everywhere west of Berry Head suddenly changed and we felt connected to the grid once more. For those people like us, who need to combine sailing and working at the same time, this is a considerable change in fortune.

We contacted Brixham Marina but the marina itself was full. However, they kindly offered us a berth on the event pontoon. They were a bit concerned that we would be without water and electric on this pontoon, but, for us, particularly as we hadn’t tied alongside a pontoon for nearly five weeks, the idea of coming alongside was sufficiently exciting and enough of a bonus.

The event pontoon itself was a very sturdy nice structure and you can enjoy all of the facilities of the marina too.

Now, Brixham Marina is an MDL marina and in our quest to survey different marinas up and down the country, we’re always intrigued with looking at the marinas that belong to some of the main groups. I must say that MDL always seem to get the basics right from a boater’s, certainly a sailor’s, perspective, those basics are immaculately clean facilities, decent warm showers, and decent washing machine and driers.
I think that some marinas these days tend to forget these basics and it’s great that MDL, certainly on the MDL marinas that we’ve visited, get these things right. Obviously, the friendly staff, decent security, trolleys and even a TV in the toilet facilities giving us the latest news are also great at Brixham but I think that far too often marinas and boating facilities can focus on the whizz bang, and not get the basics right. So well done MDL ! Thank you :)

Coming ashore in Brixham in August can be a bit of a culture shock. The town is packed with day trippers and tourists enjoying either a day out or their annual holiday in the sunshine. We use the word sunshine in inverted commas, clearly we were sheltering from bad weather and, this year, the UK, generally, seems to have had more than its fair share of this. Horizontal rain and wind and dark clouds did nothing to stem the flow of holidaymakers in Brixham.

The one thing that we noticed, that now seems to be a national seaside pastime, is the popularity of crabbing. When we were young, a mackerel head on the end of a piece of string, and the occasional small crab, was something that you did in rock pools at the seaside and, generally, it wasn’t a popular pursuit. These days, it seems that everybody has got sophisticated small crab catching equipment and, indeed, there’s even signs on the quay advising people on how to catch them, making sure they put them in buckets, don’t put the buckets in the sun, only leave them in the bucket for an hour, don’t put too many in the bucket and overcrowd them. There were literally hundreds of families catching large quantities of crabs, none of them big enough to eat, I hasten to add, but great to see people getting more involved with the sea and water.

Outside of this, we saw kids building rafts and raft racing competitions, as well as the usual tomb stoning and fishing. Because it was bad weather, most of the boating and sailing seems to have remained tied up in the marina.

Brixham has a dazzling array of fish and chip emporiums. For those of us who consider ourselves fish and chip impresarios, very pleased to inform everyone that a new Rockfish fish and chip restaurant has opened in Brixham. This is situated over the top of the fish market and looks out over the trawler dock and the trawler quay. So you get to eat fresh fish looking over the activity of the fish market and seeing the variety of Brixham and foreign trawlers coming in, coupled, of course, with the usual colourful language and brightly coloured fishing boats and trawlers.

For those, like us, who want to escape the hullabaloo of the tourist season, the Berry Head walk, which forms part of the coastal path out of Brixham, is a useful excursion. Great for dog walks, lots of open space, great views and not many people. It can be fully recommended. There also seems to be a sparkling array of new self-catering cottages and smarter B&Bs opening up in Brixham itself.

So, if you like your fish and chips, tourists and traditional seaside, coupled with a decent marina, good facilities, dog walks and 4G, Brixham has go a lot going for it.