Padstow Christmas Festival and Exeter Christmas market

Another trip down the M1, M42, M5 and A30 to Padstow for the Christmas festival with a quick stop at our favourite Gloucester services, where what should we find but a Maileg pixie sat very happily amongst the produce!

This year I had three people I wanted to see/listen to - Clare from Blossom clothing who I met at the WI Centenary Fair in Harrogate, she was doing a fashion show, Teri Walters who was doing a demonstration entitled 'Tart up your table' and finally James Martin.
Clare's fashion show was lovely even though she worked under some very difficult conditions, here are a few pictures of the lovely clothing on her stand

needless to say a little purchase was in order!
I have heard Teri Walters each year we have been down for the festival and she is always very inspiring and you come away with lots of ideas for your Christmas table. This year she focused on crackers, how to recycle cheap bought ones and also how to use them to decorate your table. As James Martin has a thing about butter Teri has a thing about cranberries. So this year I too have copied her idea for cranberries and put them in a vase and added a candle

And so to James Martin, well David and I queued for a 'sit down' ticket but failed, however we were able to stand at the  back. The only trouble was I couldn't see him at all - they had screens which showed what he was doing but the camera never switched to his face when all the banter was taking place. The only pictures we have of him are these

not great but hopefully you get the idea of how things were. He was however hilarious and anyone going to see him on his tour will be in for a good night I'm sure. 

We love the festival with it's food and alcohol stands, 

street food 

and demonstrations 

and that's alongside the lantern parade

Father Christmas on a horse drawn coach and the fireworks

In the memorial hall was Richard Bond ie Bondy from Coastees - you may remember the mug I bought from him last year and Bev from Salty Vault, who also runs one of our favourite eating places in St Merryn - Waves. Needless to say we bought Christmas presents from both Bondy and Bev.

In between our trips into Padstow there was also time for David to do some DIY for Charlotte - some additional kitchen unites, complimented with a selection of wine boxes to use as shelves

and for us to go for a walk on a very windy and wild Harlyn beach

and for me to introduce Nina to Elvis the singing reindeer

and to recycle an old Christmas hat

We decided that we would leave early on the Monday morning so as to take the opportunity to go into Exeter and explore the Christmas market. It was small compared to the one in Bath that we had been to a couple of years before but pleasant. 

We were able to continue to indulge in our love of street food by getting Thai for lunch and then bizarrely eating it in the 'Alpine bar'

I had been looking forward to a glass of mulled wine but mulled wine didn't seem to go with Thai food so water became the choice!

All in all we had a really lovely few days