During a recent holiday in Padstow, Roz from Fabulous Farm Shops popped into the Padstow Farm Shop and couldn’t wait to share her review about them!
After a blustery but bracing walk along the South West Coast Path from Padstow towards Trevose Head, we detoured through some good old Cornish lanes with high slate hedges and pink flowers blowing along their tops, to get to the Padstow Farm Shop just outside the village of Crugmeer and one mile from Padstow.
The old farm building that butts up against the road is slightly austere and grey but when you push open the door to the farm shop a bustling warmth greets you with a beautiful array of delicious things. The vegetables in their wicker baskets are plump and juicy with vine ripened tomatoes and beautiful white mushroom, cabbages so fresh you can almost smell the vitamin C and aubergines, shiny and dark. To one side of the shop is the onsite butchery with two smiling faces behind a counter full of delicious looking cuts of meat. Sausages and burgers lie beside trays of fillet steak and chops and generous chicken breasts and mince with pots of pepper sauce or bearnaise sauce also on sale to take dinner to another level.
The main area of the shop is generous with shelves down either side offering organic cereals, oils and jams, wine and beer and local delicacies with fridges and freezers at the end, homing ice creams and Cornish cream, milk and butter and juices. A table in the centre exhibits locally made candles in all shapes and sizes and scents and a small selection of local artwork.
This is a farm shop overflowing with delicacies and a generous staff serving at the tills and helping in the butchery. For a Tuesday in November, it was buzzing with shoppers and locals and visitors were happily filling baskets with the essentials and extra treats. Open since 2006, it has become a well-used outlet for the home-reared meat and farm grown vegetables from Tregirls Farm and the best that other Cornish producers have to offer.
Through another archway there is the Roundhouse deli with wonderful smells drifting through to the main shop. In here there are hot pasties from local St Agnes bakery, sausage rolls and an excellent salad bar including celeriac coleslaw, peppery sweet potato and cubed beetroot. A sweet shelf displays the most exquisite carrot cake, lemon drizzle and other tempting goodies. On another wall, a cabinet contains the most delicious looking homemade ready meals; chicken, leek and tarragon pie or bramley apple and cinnamon crumble for when you really cannot face cooking after a day in the sea!
Open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 4pm during the winter, this farm shop is a real gem and well worth sniffing out if you are anywhere near Padstow on the North Cornwall coast.
Find out more about them on their website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
Find out more about Fabulous Farm Shop membership HERE.
