Win a Roast

You could win a delicious Sunday roast dinner at the Lakeside Restaurant at Hidden Valley Holiday Park All you have to do is correctly identify the Ilfracombe street In this picture from Google Street View. Email your answer, name and full address to be in with a chance to win. Send it to us at: theilfracombemagazine@outlook.com

The winner of last month’s competition is John Pearce who correctly identified Broad Park Avenue. Congratulations!

With stunning views across the lake, the Lakeside Cafe & Restaurant has a varied menus include vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options, serving high-quality local food at reasonable prices. Enjoy delicious Sunday roasts, sumptuous Devonshire cream tea & mouthwatering steaks as well as daily specials with locally sourced ingredients.

While many won’t recognise the name Ann Cleeves, you will almost certainly know her work. The award-winning author of the popular Shetland and Vera books (and consequent TV hits) has reached a huge audience both in the UK and abroad with her fiendishly penned and typically British murder mysteries. But her latest work – the Two Rivers series – sees her return to her childhood home of North Devon, with a large chunk of the action set right here in Ilfracombe. The first of this series, The Long Call, has already been turned into a hit ITV series, portraying the town in a glorious light. The second book, The Heron’s Cry, is soon to be issued in paperback and will see Ann head to the Landmark Theatre for a special Q&A event in February. We caught up with Ann ahead of her Ilfracombe date to find out why she loves this little corner of the world. Ann said she hadn’t envisaged ever writing a book set in the South West. She said: “In the crime writing world, setting a book in the Westcountry is a bit cosy. People expect it to be all cream teas and thatched cottages, and although I write traditional crime fiction, I don’t write that sort of book. I decided I wasn’t going to write any more about Shetland – eight books was enough really for islands that are that small. My husband died quite unexpectedly and I came down to stay with an old school friend in Barnstaple. We would chat about people we used to know there and visit some of the places where I’d had a brilliant time growing up. It was the best place to be a teenager at that particular time – the music of the sixties and seventies, beach parties before quite so many tourists were here and it certainly wasn’t the cool surfing place that it is now. If there were surfers they were hippies, it was certainly not public school boys coming to celebrate the end of exams.” Although Ann lived in Barnstaple, she recalls spending time in Ilfracombe and visiting her uncle who had a butcher’s shop in the town. She said: “I have very fond memories of spending Christmas there with my aunt and uncle and cousins. When I was at school we would also come over and do joint things like drama in Ilfracombe.” Ann

returned to North Devon during the filming of the TV adaptation of The Long Call, including visiting the scene at Oxford Grove which she said she had very firmly envisaged in her head. She is looking forward to coming back to Ilfracombe for an ‘in conversation’ event at the Landmark Theatre, which will also feature Angie Daniell who produced the television series. She said: “Everybody there is so interested in the show. I came down to watch the filming for a couple of days in May and watched the conversation between Neil Morrissey and Pearl Mackie on the sea front. I also watched them filming the shots of Ben Aldridge swimming in the sea. It was beautiful weather and the cast and crew loved every minute of it, it was ice creams all round. Neil Morrissey had been into one of the local pubs and was raving about what a good time he’d had. The landlord had recognised him and given him lots of free drinks. They all loved being in Ilfracombe.” Ann said the sexuality of The Long Call’s main character, Detective Matthew Venn, was inspired by two gay friends who had looked after her after her husband Tim died. She said: “They are quite a bit younger than me but we are really great friends. They were rattling round in my head and I thought it would be great for the plot. If you have a gay son and you have that sort of faith, reconciliation is always going to be hard. So that’s how it started and that’s how Matthew Venn was born.” And there is a possibility of more filming in Ilfracombe as Ann says she plans to continue writing more books in the Two Rivers series. She said: “I’m already working on book three. The Long Call did very well on Britbox in the US, I think it had the highest viewing figures for any of their first series dramas. I’m not sure if the Heron’s Cry will be made into a television series yet, it all depends on the commissioners at ITV – but I know the cast and crew would very much like to make it.”

Ann Cleaves with actor Ben Aldridge who plays Detective Matthew Venn