Jolly Farmers Christmas Market

On Sunday we were lucky enough to spot this Christmas Market running at the Jolly Farmers pub/restaurant/deli/thingie in Betchworth (that link was from our last visit - a slightly disastrous day) on our way to the car boot sale to get some of our wedding pictures framed...We decided to stop by on our way back, pulling into the car park to be asked if we had made a reservation for lunch (we hadn't) and being directed into a muddy field as a result of our negative answer (even though there were spaces in the hard standing one) where we were met by an absolutely manic man (with a crazed look in his eye) as if he had been doomed to an eternity of trying to organise thousands of cars in hell, rather than (roughly) 1 car every five minutes for two days...

Obviously with Poppy the Beetle being all new (and just having been washed on Saturday) Flyingpops was rather loath to park where the mad, bellowing gentleman was yelling at her to drive (amid babbling assurances we wouldn't get stuck or muddy "It was perfectly alright yesterday you know!"), but as he started yanking large poles from the ground and twitching uncontrollably, she yielded...We slid our way across the car park (slightly frazzled) to the sounds of the guy shrieking at his next victim and struggled up the hill, past a chap who appeared to be making broken tent pegs from perfectly good pieces of wood -

- (as we passed him he commented, to no-one in particular "Oh no, now it's busy, that's when things normally start to go wrong", causing me to gaze with some confusion as he shredded more of the tent peg to one side with a large blade, wondering how it could possibly get any worse), and then we were into the market itself...


...which was actually rather good, lots of local produce (or so it was claimed), including all sorts of meats and fish -


- a good selection of tasting, including cheeses and Hepworth Beer from Horsham (so I know that definitely was local) -

- all sorts of crafts (including the wood some of which was for sale), Flyingpops was actually quite taken by the Christmas trees -

- (oh, and it turned out the tent pegs were supposed to be parrots) -

- an excellent selection of veg (shame we had already been to Tesco), (the extremely popular) mulled wine, and a Christmas BBQ of festive burgers and sausages (which no-one seemed interested in, but perhaps it was a little early for lunch)...

When it came time to leave, we *did* (as Flyingpops feared) get stuck in the mud, much wheel spinning (*covering* the car in mud), pushing and shoving (covering the windscreen in muddy hand prints) from me and the parking guy (serving him just about right), we finally managed to get back on the firm stuff and escape...

Parking aside, it was actually really good, and on the face of it, all very local produce...so one must applaud the effort and hope that they do a similar thing next year...

Bravo... ;)