Festivities

Well, the nights are drawing in and at last the grass is growing more slowly..!  Halloween has passed with it’s usual merriment in the village – some delighted children were seen sporting enormous hauls of sweets thanks to the good-natured and friendly spirit of the village, where the ethos is entirely about treats, interesting pumpkin carving and dressing up rather than tricking anyone.  Bonfire night has been and gone, relatively peacefully, and the village has taken on a more wintery appearance, with smoke curling from the chimneys and bonfires dotted around the village, mingling with the smell of freshly roasted coffee from Miles Coffee shop.  We’re waving a slow goodbye to the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, as we’ve eaten and drunk our fill of the village’s apples (and what a LOT of them there were, the wassailing seems to have been as successful as ever!). 
 
We have some hardy campers still booking to visit us over the festive period, coming to join family and friends or just get away from the rush elsewhere.  I wonder whether it will snow over the moors this year.  We have had campers here in the snow in the past…!
 
Thoughts are slyly turning to Christmas… some of us are decidedly more humbug than others (!) but many are eagerly anticipating seeing the village lit up with little Christmas trees and cosy lights in the shops and cottage windows.  Next weekend (25 and 26 November) the season kicks off with Porlock’s Christmas Fair, in which the village hall is filled with locally made crafts and gift ideas.  If you haven’t found all your gifts by then, you can head to the Allerford Christmas Craft Fair on 2 and 3 December.  On Friday 8 December we can cosy up in the village hall for a Victorian Christmas evening, with traditional carols, hand bells, stories and humour, a heart-warming evening that starts at 7pm (tickets are £7 per person).  Then It won’t be long until Porlock’s late night shopping and santa festival, which is a wonderful evening full of entertainment, festive refreshment, social opportunities and maybe even a little shopping (Saturday 9 December, 6-9pm).  To round off the local offering, there’s a Christmas lunch in the village hall on Tuesday 8 December from 12.30pm. 
 
If all that isn’t enough, there’s the famous Dunster by Candlelight nearby on 1 and 2 December (shuttle buses leave at regular intervals from the Doverhay car park in Porlock).  If you’d like a little trip across the moor, you could also head to Dulverton by Starlight on Sunday 3 December.  I think that after all this I might need a restorative lie down – saving just enough energy to write my letter to Father Christmas first; I’ve been very good this year.  

*Thanks to Lucy Stevens-Mounfield for the photo of Porlock, taken November 2017.