Oct 8: East of England Autumn Fair

For most of the nights in London we stayed in a hotel, as D&D's place was a tad on the small side for an extended stay. The hotel was nice, the room was very modern and extremely small. They don't use washcloths over there, I thought that was quite odd. Apparently they are hard to find at all.

I had decided, before we left, that if I was going to be on another continent in a CITY for a week (I'm really not a city person!!!) that I darn well needed to see a poultry show. Finding one proved somewhat challenging, since it's a bit early in the season for the big open shows. By following a maze of links I did eventually stumble onto the East of England Autumn Fair, and was able to confirm with one of my British poultry connections that there was indeed a nice poultry show at the fair. So I insisted we go see it. The idea seemed to be meet with a bit of confusion (after all, can't I see all the chickens I need here??) but in the end I think a very good time was had by all.

So Sunday had nice weather again, though a little more overcast and a little more breezy. We drove to Peterborough, which was 90something miles from London.

I'd have to say this was my favorite part of the trip. :-)


It was VERY different than a fair like we have around here. While a place like the CA State Fair has a tendency to bring every white trash person in the state out in the open, the English fair was nothing like that. People seemed much more normal. Lots of tweed, lots of berets...just like you might imagine!

There were lots and lots of vendors there, but again, unlike a CA fair there were no mops, no salsa-makers, no sunglasses, none of that ultra-commercial stuff. It was much practical. Lots of clothing (coats, boots, sooo many socks!!), livestock equipment, pet supplies, hardware, artwork, kitchen items, specialty foods, and THREE vendors selling portable chicken coops!! How neat!

I had a Cornish Pasty for lunch (pastry filled with meat and potatoes) which was excellent. Apparently this is one of those traditional foods. Very hearty meal... And later in the day a bit of Turkish delight, which is candy, and wonderful.

I took so many photos I'm going to break it up into sections and talk about each thing separately. But for starters here's Mom (hiding on the inside row), me (YES I'm riding the giant rooster, of course!) and DJ on the really neat old steam-powered Merry Go Round.