SHE SHELLS SEA SHELLS

At last we managed to get into the Crab Shack in Teignmouth.

There are two beaches in Teignmouth - one on the English Channel side where children build sand castles and dogs do what dogs do on beaches.  There is a pier and a crazy golf and everything.  But up the estuary (Teignmouth [pron. Tin mouth] is at the mouth, surprisingly enough, of the River Teign [pron. Tane] in the district of Teignbridge [pron. Teen bridge]), the river has deposited silt to such a degree that there is now another beach facing north.  This beach is called, unoriginally, Backbeach.  The oldest pub in the town sits here.  Indeed two other pubs sit here too.  And then there is a sort of a hut, which is a restaurant.  This is the Crab Shack.  It only opened about a year ago, but it has been full ever since.  You now need to book two weeks in advance.  On Saturday, on the off chance, we popped in and found that there had been a cancellation.  Hooray!

This is Amanda, the proprietress. 

They have their own fishing boat, so everything is fresh on the day.  The menu is mostly buckets of crabs or lobsters or platters of seafood and of course oysters and mussels from the River.  Teignmouth used to have a thriving seine net fishery on the river which is highly tidal.  It still manages mussels and oysters.  This is the inside of the hut.

And here's the other reason why the Crab Shack is attractive.  This is the diners' view.
  

Anyway, I had the oysters (fabulous - much tastier than those from Whitstable), some crab pate (oh, melt in the mouth gorgeous) and a pan-fried fish (which was brill.  Geddit?!)

Here's the view once the sun had gone.

But we were going nowhere, until it was finally dark.