This Side of the Pond

Quick, off the top of your head: what edible item are you least likely to include in your dinner plans tonight?

If your answer was “stinging nettles”, I’m afraid you’re not going to be much of a contender at an annual event I had no idea has been going on in my home county.

I speak of Dorset’s version of the traditional eating contest, which movies have informed me will usually involve scarfing down several thousand hot dogs or cherry pies. However, it would seem my neighbors did not get the memo about attracting more participants by featuring pleasant flavors.

And so, we introduced humanity to the World Nettle Eating Championship. I have no issue believing that its modest number of competitors does indeed represent the total percentage of people on this planet who are willing to chow down on a plant that bites back.

I can’t believe I didn’t know of the existence of this contest – it’s been going on since 1997, so I’ve had plenty of chances to notice. It’s a fairly standard eating competition, from the looks of it, with one important – and aforementioned – difference.

After steeling themselves, the competitors take their seats at a table on which there are piles of stinging nettles, each one cut down to a two-foot stalk. For the next hour, they must eat as many of those stalks as they can.

This allegedly includes anything that happens to be sitting on said stalks, which means there’s the potential for some bug-based protein to be added to your meal. This does not make me want to join in any more than I already did.

You don’t have to eat the stalk itself, which is something, I suppose. At the end of the hour – and let me please stress that amount of time, because we are talking about a full 60 minutes of torture here – the winner is declared to be the person with the most bare stalks in their pile.

Now, I do understand that humans have been consuming nettles for thousands of years as a diuretic or for allergy or joint pain, but even our distant ancestors had the good sense to whip up a tea or a tincture for their daily dose. You’re supposed to cook or steam it to destroy the hairs, which are the source of that awful sting.

Having spent many a day of my childhood howling about the rash all down my calves (because I had a tendency to wade into wild spaces without thinking about the consequences), I can’t imagine willingly accepting the same sensation on my tongue. Judging by the pained look on contestants’ faces, I suspect they now feel the same way.

The organizers admit that the leaves “cause tongues to swell and blacken”, which really doesn’t sound like the makings of a healthy hobby. Not to mention the effect it would have on your hands as you plucked each leaf for the chewing.

If you vomit, you’re disqualified, and that seems likely considering both the pain and the fact you’re only allowed water or beer and I’m sure there’s a lot of washing down needed throughout the hour. Nettles don’t even have a pleasant taste to balance out the discomfort.

You might be wondering why such a contest even exists, and I think that’s a fair question. Apparently, as with so many negative things in life, it began with a quarrel.

This particular argument was between two local farmers enjoying a drink in the Bottle Inn in Marshwood. Both men felt the stinging nettles in their field were bigger than the stinging nettles in the other man’s field.

On the face of it, that doesn’t seem like a hill it’s worth dying on, but the farmers disagreed. They made a bet with each other that they could find the tallest nettle and bring it to the inn.

The first farmer came back with a nettle stalk that was an impressive 15 feet in length. I admit that even I would have noticed such a monster if I’d come across it as a kid, so I can maybe see why he was so adamant about his being the tallest.

He confidently stated that, if anyone was able to find a longer nettle stalk, he would eat the difference. He then regretted his hubris when the second farmer turned up with a 16-foot stalk.

True to his word, the farmer at a foot of painful plant. Somehow – and here’s where the story gets murky – this transformed into an annual eating contest that brings competitors from all over the world to chomp on a pile of nettles.

It’s no longer held at the Bottle Inn, sadly, because the place was forced to close due to being over 500 years old. The loss of the venue, though, did not dissuade these self-torturers from carrying on.

So if you’re looking for something fun and unusual to do in the summer months, you could always head over to my old home. You might not beat the record holder – the appropriately named Philip Thorne, who chewed his way through 104 feet of nettles – but I’m told the new venue has some great craft ciders to help cheer you up once you’re done.