The early bird catches the freshest fish!

If, like me, you are a lover of fish, then this is an experience you should not miss. I have just spend the most inspirational day at Billingsgate Fish Market in East London - what an experience.

We started the day at 6.15am (I realise to most of you this may actually be the middle of the night! But for us rowers, it's half way through the day, so was no hardship for me), and it was so worth getting up for. We started with a tour of the market with Brian, who told us everything we wanted to know about the market itself and all the types of fish and

seafood that were on offer - you will have never seen such fresh and wonderful fish!

We were given the odd taster - hot smoked salmon at 6.45am on a freezing cold winter morning tastes heavenly! After the tour we moved upstairs to the Seafood Training School and were served a delicious plate of kedgeree (one of my favourite fish dishes) and a hot drink to thaw us all out.

After that it was over to us - we were all shown to our work stations, and from then on followed the wonderful Adam who talked us through dressing a crab, skinning monkfish, filleting a mackerel, and loads more tips on how to prepare the fish that is available to us in the UK.

Finally, all our hard work was rewarded with a delicious bowl of fish soup, made with the results of our filleting, peeling and chopping!

So impressed by the whole day, I offered to run a healthy eating workshop along the same lines and CJ who runs the school agreed - so watch this space for more details of workshops taking place in June and October this year.

For details of other workshops available go to www.seafoodtraining.org.