Here's a true story about that little town, called Portwenn on the show and Port Isaac in real life. We stayed there, I keep saying a week but it was 11 days before the show was filmed and it was quite an experience. I believe you can see Doyden House, the house we rented from the National Trust in some of the breakaway photos of the cliffs, in the distance, because of the folly/little castle type thing: the two buildings have a distinct appearance.
The first night everybody in our party wanted to go INTO Port Isaac and eat dinner. I didn't feel like getting dressed after such a long trip, so I stayed behind and ate at the house. They came back raving over the food and how we must all go the next night. So I went. The little restaurant was slap right on that cove and I think it's the same one with the blackboard outside sometimes shown in the older episodes, but am not sure. I know you had to wait while they brought up the catch and that's what they cooked, and there were only a couple of tables inside.
So anyway I sat down on on of those benches shown overlooking the cove, waiting for them to decide what they would cook that day, and after a minute up came a man and said, are you feeling better? And I said what? And he said I hope you are feeling better and left. And then here came two more who looked like fishermen with the same inquiry and that started a regular parade of folks, some in twos and some alone, some looking exactly like some of the "characters" in the series do, all hoping I "felt better." It was like one of those Avenger movies, the old ones with Mr. Steed. One sat down and we conversed quite a while on his own stomach problems, and possible remedies, happily.
And here I am, having grown up in the big cities of the urban North in the US, where you don't converse with perfect strangers who approach you strangely on the street asking personal questions. There seemed to be a LOT of very nice people passing by, and a great number of them were inquiring over my health. Since I felt fine and at the time was walking/jogging 9 miles a day, I couldn't understand it, and when we took a seat inside, the friendly inquiries continued from the wait staff.
Seeing the look on my face, my friends explained that.. the previous night, for some chatty reason they had felt compelled to explain who they were and my absence, and, to explain why I was not there, they had said I felt sick.
I think of that sometimes, fondly, because it does show the small village character of the place as it once was, which was kind of extraordinary, and charming. It also points out Agatha Christie's observations about life in a small village.
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