WOW, what a summer. Heat! Hooray! Thunder storms. Wow. Believable deluges that actually flooded the market square and meant you had to stand in two inches of water to buy a pot of honey.
Last Saturday was (un)officially the wettest market day any of us could remember and as for the square flooding? Well, that’s totally unprecedented. Customer numbers were likewise terrible, although we are very grateful to those who made the effort to come down, with the trading levels being compared to that tiny little market we have on the first Saturday in January after the hols. It’s a tragedy for the stall holders. Many of them will have no option but to bin all the leftovers (or treat the neighbours) and cut their losses. The weirdest thing was that after getting totally soaked three times during the day I then finished off the Saturday with a family BBQ in the boiling hot evening sun.
This Saturday sees the return of Croft Farm with their first plums. It has been a good year and the crop is bounteous. During the next few weeks you will see more than 10 different varieties of plums at the stall. All the other soft fruits; cherries, raspberries, strawberries and currants will all be available too.
Elsewhere this Saturday Simon Weaver’s Organic cheeses will be in attendance with Brie, blue Brie, Greek style, mozzarella and their new single Gloucester cheeses; Ascott gardens will have fruit, plants, flowers and their fabulous range of ceramics; Stroud brewery and Gloucester brewery will have the ale, from dark to pale; Cotswold Puddings will also have the perfect after dinner treat because sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream is yummy. and Naite farm eggs return with freshly laid eggs; and finally the lovely Emma will be running the café in the square with hot and cold drinks, her fabulous cakes and summer lunch; the salad pot.