The Royal Easter Show

Last week, we went to the Royal Easter Show at Olympic Park in Sydney. I’ve never been to a county fair or such like before and, I must say, it was a lot of fun.

It’s a really well organised affair and despite the large numbers of people, it never really felt over-crowded. Public transport to and from the venue was included in the ticket, which was a nice touch. Extra shuttles were laid on from central station and exiting the train at Olympic Park with the crowd, I felt like I got a glimpse of the excitement and atmosphere that must have been present when arriving for the Olympics itself.

We didn’t really know what to expect, so we didn’t plan our day as such and mostly just mooched about. There were some events in the main arena as well as a couple of other venues within the Olympic Park. We did not see much but did catch some of the wood chopping, which was interesting and rather crazy. These guys have some very shiny axes and sure can chop wood!

Just before lunch we saw part of the “300mm underhand” competition, in which the competitors stand atop the block to be chopped and then hack down into it. A few well-aimed hefty blows chops out one side before the competitors turn around and chop out the other side to split the log. It’s all over in a few seconds.

Good as the wood chopping was, one of the main motivations for attending the Show was the Arts & Crafts section. My wife knits and knew several people with entries in different knit-craft competition categories, including some winners. Not being so into fashion, my favourites were probably the knitted toys and creative knitting, including a Dr Who and Tardis and South Park nativity scene.

The creativity was not limited to knitted items, of course. Lots of other handicrafts were on display. I particularly enjoyed the cake decorating competition entries, which were simply sublime and incredibly imaginative. These alone were probably worth the entry money.

Something else that really impressed me was the breadth and depth of the agricultural displays geared towards children, which were engaging, entertaining and educational in equal measure. These included cow milking, sheep shearing and a small animal barn in which goats and chickens etc. were roaming free and could be fed with hay that was on sale by the cup.

After checking these out, and some of the “best of breed” animal competitions, we visited the Woolworths fresh food dome. Unfortunately, we has already had lunch at this point - if we go again next year then we will definitely look to eat here instead of the many fast food options available.

The Food Dome was also the home of the impressive agricultural district displays:

Climbing up the walls of the Woolworths Fresh Food Dome, the District Exhibits are one of the Show’s iconic displays, featuring creative and artistic installations assembled from outstanding quality grain, wool, fruit and vegetables. Each display consists of more than 10,000 pieces of the best quality fresh produce from five agricultural districts throughout NSW and South East Queensland.

Following the bad bush fires this year, there were a couple of poignant displays, including one that featured an aerial firefighting helicopter and several fire engines. The size of some of the produce was also extremely impressive!

All in all, it was a really fun day and highly recommended, whether you have kids or not. Well worth the $38.50. It’s on until Wednesday, so if you live in/near Sydney, there’s still time!

It's pumpkin time!

Halloween is approaching and, thanks to an unexpected work trip for my wife, we have had to accelerate our preparations slightly. Last night, therefore, was pumpkin-carving time! We never really did anything for Halloween when I was a kind, so my first pumpkin carving experience had to wait until a few years ago.

In the past, we have made use of hand-drawn designs inspired by the internet. (For my first pumpkin, I was only involved in the design and my girlfriend (now wife) did the actual carving.) This year we got a pumpkin carving kit from Ocado that cam we a few designs, so we decided to use a couple of those. They were quite big but we got a couple of "monster" pumpkins from Sainsburys. Sitting on our dining room table, I think my "monster" lived up to its name!

I was a bit lazy and did not scoop the inside out as much as I should have done but I think the end result (below, left) was still pretty good. The carving tools in the pumpkin kit were pretty effective and a little less scary that hacking away with a knife or scalpel, although we still used one of the sharp pointy tools from Cait's Uni dissection kit to poke the outline of the designs. My wife remains the pumpkin champ of our house, though, as her haunted house (below, right) shows. (I'll try to get some better pictures on the night but these were just quick iPhone snaps should any evil befall our pumpkins in the meantime!)

Lymington market rules!

It's another rainy Saturday in July, which has me wistfully thinking back to recent Saturdays that were not so wet - and catching up with some queued blog posts before they are completely out of date.

The week before our friends left for America (and after they had sold their car), we asked them if there was anywhere they wanted to go one last time, and Lymington was that somewhere. I thought that I had blogged about Lymington before but it seems that I haven't. It's a lovely little town on the south coast of Hampshire in the New Forest district. In addition to some nice walks nearby (particularly around the mudflats to the west), a large open air saltwater swimming pool, and a ferry to the Isle of Wight, Lymington has a market on the High Street every Saturday.

We'd been looking for some salad hands for ages and that Saturday, we found some! (Of course, now that we have some (a) they seem to be everywhere and (b) the weather has refused to provide any decent salad weather.) The stall from which we bought our salad hands had loads of lovely carved products and was just one of the local craft and food stalls. The market also features a load of general household goods stalls but rather than (or, perhaps, in addition to) the usual tat that I associate with such things, they tend to be selling really useful stuff at great prices. As well as our beautiful salad hands, we also managed to get half a dozen other odds and sods between us that we had been looking for elsewhere.

My favourite eatery in Lymington, the Vanilla Pod cafe, has sadly closed down, so I can no longer recommend a trip incorporating a fantastic brunch. Nevertheless, there are plenty of nice places to eat and the sandwiches and cakes in the Driftwood Cafe - a small takeaway-only cafe in the cobbled are of the town centre where we got some coffee - looked particularly good. If you are in the area and the sun should ever decide to grace us with its presence again (or, I suppose, the clouds decide to let it), I thoroughly recommend a visit.