STRAWBERRIES and crinolines will be making an appearance at local train stations this week as market gardeners take a traditional route to London.

The Tamar Valley growers will don Victorian dress tomorrow (Friday) and head for the platforms to despatch punnets of strawberries on their journey to Covent Garden ? thus continuing a 140-year-old summer tradition of getting the earliest crop to market.

They are recreating the achievement that made local market gardeners nationally famous in the last quarter of the 19th century to celebrate the launch of a new book following the gardeners? story.

?Sovereigns, Madams and Double Whites? commemorates the fruit and flower pioneers of the Tamar Valley and tells the trade?s story using historic records, local memories and specially commissioned new photography.

Joanna Lewis, the book?s editor, said: ?Market gardening was a central part of Tamar Valley life for more than 100 years and there are still many people who remember it at its last peak in the 1950s when up to 10,000 people were employed locally on picking and packing fruits, flowers and vegetables.?

The book addresses aspects of market gardening which are special to the Tamar Valley ? the particular way in which the sloping sides of the valley were planted and, most especially, the earliness of the strawberries that made Tamar Valley growers famous throughout the land.

This claim to fame came by chance when local grower James Walter Lawry visited Covent Garden fruit market in 1862 after a sight-seeing trip to Crystal Palace.

He was amazed to find only ?forced? strawberries on sale ? and these at five times the price of his own crop on the Devon/Cornwall border.

For their part the London traders were equally astounded to hear that the Tamar season for outdoor-grown fruits was almost at an end ? so they sent Lawry home with a contract to supply Covent Garden market with early season strawberries from that day onward.

Amongst tomorrow?s well-wishers will be descendants of James Lawry.

Completing the entire journey with the summer fruits will be Sarah and Claire Veale ? twins who work at their family?s market gardening business on land that was once part of James Walter Lawry?s Bohetherick Farm.

Anyone interested in seeing the re-enactment can catch the new age Victoriana on Calstock station at 10.30am, Bere Alston at 10.36am or Bere Ferrers at 10.43am.

There will be a longer stop at Plymouth Station when frock coats and mob caps will be waiting on the London platform from 12.10pm until 12.40pm.

l ?Sovereigns, Madams and Double Whites? is published tomorrow by Tamar Valley AONB Service at £18.99.