Burnham-On-Sea food festival organisers Bev and Sarah Milner Simonds say they are shocked to have been mentioned by the Prince of Wales in the introduction to a new book exploring Somerset.
Deepest Somerset, published last week, is a new publication that explores the people, the places and the roots of the community.
Written by Fanny Charles and Gay Pirrie-Weit, the book is the third and last in their series lifting the lid on West Country counties and what makes them unique.
Prince Charles says in the book: “Particularly striking is Bev and Sarah Milner [Simonds] description of arriving in Somerset to find that their new neighbours felt completely disconnected from the productive landscape surrounding their town, and how that inspired them to create their food festivals to bring people and the land together.”
eat:Festivals co-founder Sarah Milner Simonds says: “We were blown away to read the introduction and to be picked out like that – there are over 400 businesses and people in the book and to think of out of all those our origin story touched Prince Charles is mind blowing.”
And co-founder Bev Milner Simonds adds: “It’s 9 years ago today (Wednesday) since we held our first food and drink festival right here in our hometown of Burnham-On-Sea. Since then the event here has grown and we have been invited to host festivals in 20 different towns, welcomed over 850,000 visitors, won 27 awards, created 4890 trading opportunities and generated over £42m of local economic impact. We are impressively proud of what we have created and chuffed to bits with this incredible recognition.”
The authors of the book will be at the next eat:Burnham-on-Sea food festival on Saturday 23rd October with copies of their book, plus the others in the Deepest series.
