THE FRENCH onion will be celebrated with a special festival in west Dorset this month.

The Onion Jack Festival will be held at a host of venues across West Bay and Bridport, including Washingpool Farm in North Allington.

The event, including travelling door-to-door onion sellers, the Onion Johnnies, will take place from Thursday, October 22 until Sunday, October 25.

There are plans for a procession of cycling Johnnies and a horse pulling a loaded cart from West Bay harbour to Washingpool Farm, with stops along the way.

Breton stalls, live French music, charity food sales in Bridport, food-tasting events, and the chance to try delicious crêpes will be taking place during the event.

Bryony Brock of Washingpool Farm, said: “The Onion Jack Festival is shaping up to be extremely exciting and will be jam-packed with various French, English and onion themed events.

“We are finalising the full programme now with our French friends, but we can guarantee it will be a lot of fun and a real chance to get a taste of traditional Breton fare.

“It is really appropriate to celebrate the Onion Johnnies, as bringing the best of fresh produce to customers in sustainable ways is what we believe in here at Washingpool.”

Onion Jack founders Emmanuel Le Noac’h, with colleagues Laurent Caroff and Damien Zanlonghi, sell strings of Breton onions, garlic and shallots to more than 100 outlets in Britain and are keen to bring back the tradition of Onion Johnnies.

Emmanuel said: “We are all very excited to be a part of the Onion Jack Festival.

“The Festival will mark the traditional ways of harvesting the onions by hand and carrying them by horse to the port and making the voyage to England as it was done in days gone by.”

The Onion Johnnies first arrived in Britain almost 200 years ago after Breton traders first realised the benefits of exporting their produce across the channel.

The sight of a beret-wearing Frenchman, wearing a striped jumper and weighed down by strings of onions as he cycled from house to house was a common sight until the trade almost died out in the 1970s.