Season report

The Harbour Market, a season in review

Twenty-six Saturdays, ninety-one stalls, one very wet August.

The market officeSeptember 2026

The season in numbers

Every Saturday we count people at the two gates and ask stallholders for a rough sales figure. Neither number is exact, but both are counted the same way every week, so the trend is real even when a single week is not.

August is the dip. It rained on four of the five Saturdays, and the fifth was a bank holiday when half the town was away. Take August out and the season is up closer to a quarter.

Where the money went

The first weekend of the month is consistently the strongest, most likely because it follows payday. The fifth weekend only happens twice a season, which is why its column is short.

Who comes, and when

Weekday or weekend?

Several stallholders asked for a Thursday market. We ran a trial in June. The comparison is not close.

What stallholders told us

We asked every stall three questions at the end of the season. Sixty-two answered.

Quotes are printed with permission. A few have been shortened; none have been changed in meaning.

The plan for next season

Returning stallholders who apply in October keep their old pitch number unless they ask to move.

Food stalls must send their hygiene certificate with the application. We cannot hold a pitch while you wait for one.

Generators are not allowed on the harbour side. If you need power there, wait for the sockets in March.

The harbour road closes for the regatta on the second Saturday of July. There is no vehicle access after 7 am that day.

Before your first Saturday

• Insurance certificate sent
• Pitch number confirmed
• Table, weights for the gazebo, a float of small change
• Read the market rules below — especially the bit about the van

The small print

Rules that come up every year

The pitch plan is published as a small text file so stallholders can read it on any phone. Each line is a pitch:

# pitch  row   power  water  stall
A01      wall  yes    yes    Amadi's Kitchen
A02      wall  yes    no     Harbour Bread
B07      mid   no     no     Second Reading (books)

The office script that turns the applications into that plan is short enough to show here. It does one thing: put the stalls that need water next to the taps.

def place(stalls, pitches):
    """Water first, then power, then whatever is left."""
    by_need = sorted(stalls, key=lambda s: (not s.water, not s.power))
    plan = {}
    for stall in by_need:
        pitch = next(p for p in pitches if p.fits(stall) and p not in plan)
        plan[pitch] = stall
    return plan

Inline details, like the fee of €38 per Saturday or the A-row pitches, are marked up the same way a longer block would be. Words the council changed their mind about, like a Sunday market, stay visible so the history is honest. Footnotes go at the bottom of the page.¹

The fee, worked out

We are sometimes asked how the season fee is set. It is the running cost split evenly, plus a small reserve for the wet-weather fund:

\text{fee} = \frac{\text{running cost} + \text{reserve}}{\text{stalls}} = \frac{28{,}600 + 6{,}000}{91} \approx 380

That is the whole formula. A stall that trades every Saturday pays 26 \times 38 = 988, which is more than the season fee because the weekly rate includes the pitch on the days it is empty.

How an application moves

flowchart LR
  A[Application] --> B{Insurance and hygiene?}
  B -- no --> C[Ask for documents]
  C --> B
  B -- yes --> D[Pitch plan draft]
  D --> E[Confirmed in December]

Pictures from the season

Ines Varga

Market manager

Runs the office, the register and the Wednesday pitch confirmations. Ask her about power before you ask anyone else.

Email the officeThe council page

Compiled by the market office from gate counts, stallholder returns and the June survey. Numbers are rounded.