Music And Dance At The Ness In Shaldon

A Memory of Shaldon.

I have driven - very slowly - past The Ness many times whenever our family makes our way up the steep narrow lane from the Shaldon sea front to the car park. For the very first time I went inside one evening this summer, as a result of being asked to leave the Ferryboat Inn earlier!

I was in Shaldon with my wife Elizabeth who is a dancer with the Heather and Gorse Clog Morris - her dance side arranged to perform at the Ferryboat Inn along with Grimspound Border Morris, but the popularity of the two dance teams drew such a large crowd of onlookers that the Ferryboat Inn landlady announced that we would have to go! We were blocking both the narrow road and the pavement with our dancers, musicians and holidaymakers enjoying our show! Interestingly we were part of the Shaldon Regatta Week entertainments and had spent a considerable sum on the Morris Dancers' traditional tipple of beer in the pub as soon as we arrived at 8 o’clock but less than half an hour later we had to leave. We decided to walk along the sea front and up the slope to The Ness where the manager and staff welcomed us and invited us to play our music and dance on their lovely terrace. They helped us move a few tables to make space and the two dance teams provided an hour of entertainment for the hotel guests. We wound up with a dance for the hotel guests themselves which was great fun – there must have been about forty people joining in that final dance, and several tables of the hotel’s drinkers joined in with a percussion accompaniment to the Morris musicians on their squeezeboxes! The Ness is a fabulous place, nice staff and serves good beer. The restaurant menu looked enticing but sadly not enough time to sample it on this occasion.

As the sun set we looked down from the terrace on the seaward side of The Ness across the Teign Estuary and saw the seafront illuminations by Teignmouth pier. It was something of a surreal experience, being entertained with traditional English folk music and dancing, overlooking a beautiful vista of English seaside while sitting on the terrace of a two hundred year old exquisite Georgian property. Definitely a memory to be remembered!