The Big Apple Festival

On Saturday, we drove about an hour north of Bristol to a village called Much Marcle, near Hereford where the Big Apple Festival was taking place. The festival is "a harvestime celebration of English apples and cider in the Herefordshire parishes of the Marcle Ridge."Our day began at Westons English Ciders where we enjoyed a coffee and tea in the cafe before the tour of the Cider Mill. Westons also produces perry, which is like cider, but made from perry pears.
The tour guide explained the traditional way to produce cider (alcoholic). The apples would be put into a large circular trough, and a large stone wheel would be rolled along the trough, thus squishing the apples. The apple pulp would then be put into muslin cloth and squeezed by a press. The juice would then flow into a bucket in front of the press.
Once the demand for cider increased, the mechanized presses were used; the one below was used until 1999!
Although Westons has its own orchards, most of the apples are brought in from orchards up to a 40-mile radius from the cider mill. All types of apples are dumped into the huge baths to be washed.The cider is still fermented in HUGE, multi-story oak barrels as you can see in the background. These are the three oldest barrels, which date back to the late 1800's and are still in use!
After the tour, we drove to Awnells farm nearby. We got to meet Daniel the Hereford bull and other Hereford cows.

I told the cows to say "cheese"... little joke.

We then walked through the farm's orchard, picked a couple of apples, though they weren't too nice.
Here I am picking a perry pear; it wasn't very nice either. We looked for a partridge in the pear tree, but didn't see one... okay, another wee joke.

At the back of the orchard was a hedge of blackberry bushes! Of course, I helped myself to those as well!
Our next stop was St. Batholomew's church. There were a few vendors inside, so I bought a jar each of homemade raspberry jam and chutney and also a little pumpkin.
We climbed up 50-odd stairs to the middle of the bell tower and were given the chance to ring the bells!
Not only were there hundreds of years-old grave stones, but also this rather large tree.

We enjoyed the Big Apple Festival along with the beautiful weather and scenery and look forward to exploring more of the area once we move up to Gloucester.