A weekend in Worcestershire

We had a fantastic time down around Malvern at the weekend.

Or, at least, I had a fantastic time. Everyone else showed every evidence of enjoying themselves.

We went to the Three Counties Agricultural Show on Saturday. Big, black, dark clouds threatened. We had our rain kit. We carried the golfing umbrella. Fortunately, we had no reason to use the umbrella :-) Rain threatened several times but kept drifting off elsewhere. We were not complaining. And the umbrella made an excellent walking stick. Once I’d convinced The Builder to carry it!

We had, on the whole, an excellent day. It was a proper agricultural show with tractors and animals and everything.

There were lots and lots and lots of chickens. Remarkably expensive chickens. Some entirely impractical chickens. There was one that looked like an electrocuted cotton wool ball. You couldn’t possibly have let that outside in the rain. There were lots with fluffy, fluffy feet (ditto outside and the rain). Some very, very beautiful ones. But I think that my chickens, when they come, might have to be just ordinary ones. Not chickens that need brushing everyday! And who would have thought that there would be show categories for collections of eggs! I plan to eat the eggie offerings from our chickens.

There were some beautiful chook houses at the show.

And there were alpacas, and cows and horses and sheep and pigs. Alpacas are very soft.

Quite fortuitously, we were there for the pig judging. The pigs are supposed to walk around nicely, the boar following the sow, so the Severe Judge in a Bowler Hat could admire them. The pigs didn’t want to do that. They wanted to run around and to look at the other pigs and to bite their ears and to snuffle for tasty treats in the grass. One pig made a bit for freedom. And actually did escape from the ring! She had to be rounded up and brought back in again!

There was a bee tent with jars and jars of honey that had been judged (Think how many triangles of toast the judges must have had to eat to taste all that honey - and what would you use as a palate cleanser between each sample!) Beautiful wax candles (although I vastly preferred the third prize winner to the first prize candles!) and bees in "hives" so that you could see what they were doing.

We had a not very exciting lunch from one of the vending vans (although, my jacket potato and beans weren’t too bad) and we watched the sheep shearing.

*Then* we found the food hall. Had we but known … Although The Builder and I managed to find room for a subsidiary spot of lunch (crayfish tails in a cup for me; cockles for The Builder.)

(In reply to Richard - I did know there was a food hall but had rather assumed that it would be full of things being judged, like cakes and jams and onions and carrots rather than stalls of things to take away and eat.)

There was a medieval village with jousting and archery and stuff. We all know rather more than we might have wanted to about the life of a medieval archer. A man working as a fletcher was kind enough to tell us all about it. At length!

We stayed on Saturday night in a village which goes by the fabulous name of Upton Snodsbury, near Worcester. The pub was lovely and the bedrooms are in converted barns. The food at dinner was absolutely wonderful. Breakfast was equally wonderful. In addition to all the egg, bacon, sausage combinations you would expect to find, you could also have smoked haddock with poached eggs (which I had) or kippers, or all sorts of things.

Then we wandered up the road to find the village proper (the pub is right on the very edge and we had reached it before needing to pass through the village). The Post Office and store are in the front of an old, old house. The church is gorgeous. There are beautiful houses and gardens. And there are farms and fields. We called at one of the farms, which as a shop attached. And around the farmyard there were chickens and geese and ducks. There was a pen with some ducklings being mothered by a chook. There was another pen with a mare and her day old foal – which was still quite wobbly on legs which were way too long for its body! In a horse box there was a sow with some minute, tiny day old piglets. And there was a woofy dog which really didn’t want us to look at the piglets in their horsebox. I think he thought Bea might be tempted to slide one into her back pack! He might have been right :-)

We went to Upton upon Severn (so many Uptons!) for a walk along the river (yes, of course the River Severn – much, much less wide than when it reaches Bristol) and lunch in one of the many, many pubs Upton has to offer. So many that it was extremely difficult to select one in which to have lunch. It had to be a riverside one, of course. But *which* riverside one? We eventually settled for the King’s Head because it had an outside eating area next to the river, across the road from the pub. Except that you can’t eat hot food there; only cold. So we went into their smokers’ courtyard, there being no smokers and it being possible to eat hot food there. And it was just as well for while we were eating, under the cover of a HUGE patio umbrella, there was a shower. Didn’t last for long, but it was Very Heavy while it did last.

And then we came home along country roads and not the motorways. It was all very civilised.

Bea and Steve carried on to Sheffield while we pottered around in the garden and sorted things out and talked to the cat.

It was a lovely weekend. Except – nobody seems to have done the ironing!

Planning now for the autumn show at the end of September. Fewer animals, more produce. It’s sort of a harvest fair as far as I can tell. I must remember to buy the program when I buy the tickets - makes it easier to plan when to go!

The Lady who lent me the money for a sandwich during last Monday’s rainstorm has been in a car accident. She’s in the hospital, all broken. Legs, ankles, sternum, shoulder blade … Think it will take them quite a long time to glue her back together again :-(