Snods Edge Garlic Festival

[shewhomust]

Occasionally, driving north and west, usually to the starting point of a walk, we pass through Snod's Edge: on a Sunday morning, the cars parked along the roadside indicate that there is something here, and then if you look behind the trees, you can see a church, and a church hall. Nothing else.

I first saw the Garlic Festival mentioned in a tourist information brochure; then a notice at a farm shop; finally a reference on the internet on the website of the ice cream company who would not only be present, but would be selling garlic ice cream. No internet presence of its own, no leaflets to take home and pin to the noticeboard. This elusiveness only made it harder to resist.

It was raining, of course, not heavily, but persistently. And the celebrity chef who was to have opened the fair, cried off because of "problems". Despite which, we had a good time: "an hour and a half of garlic-related entertainment" to quote helenraven.

The entry fee (£1) bought you ten tickets, which could be exchanged for samples, but most of the exhibitors were eager to offer their wares, and had to be reminded to accept the tickets. This lack of commercial drive means that while I came away with a newsletter entitled Snod's Edge Garlic Gossip, it does not list the varieties of garlic available (or indicate how I can buy more, when I run out) - but there was Transylvanian garlic, Persian rose, huge heads of Elephant garlic, and a variety mysteriously named Music. There were baskets of garlic, wreaths of garlic, and bowls of roasted and smoked garlic to sample and compare. There was garlic soup (which was excellent), garlic bread and garlic beer. There was garlic ice cream, but I sampled the vanilla-and-chilli instead (excellent creamy vanilla, not much chilli): when I asked about the possibility of chocolate-and-chilli, the venor told me that I wasn't the first person to ask that, and wondered why.

We bought bouquets of garlic, ordered a case of wine, and came home to gather our strength for the rest of the weekend.

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