Cream Tea and Coconut Shies- Reach Fair

I realise that I am very late with this blog post, but the sheer quintessential Englishness of Reach Fair needs to be recounted- it really is something else!

Reach is a small town near Cambridge where every May day they hold a traditional Fair. This is Tradition in all its bizarre, nonsensical wonderfulness.

The fair opens with a town crier doing the traditional "Hear yea, hear yea!" spiel whilst warning everyone that they will be thrown into prison if they interrupt the speeches. The Mayor then gives a speech (the subject of which I have no idea as she unfortunately forgot to turn the microphone on...) before throwing shiny once pence pieces into the crowd. I am slightly surprised that health and safety still allows this, it turns out that being hit by flying coins kind of hurts. But hey, I'm not going to complain if they want to literally shower me in money, I made a whole 3p out of that!

After the money throwing, the fun really begins with Morris dancers, coconut shies, swing boats, helter skelters and the first sun burn of the year. Lovely Jubbly.

And of course, being me, I headed straight for the traditional tea time treats. First we tucked into a caramel cheesecake and bramely apple slice we bought from a bakery stand. I love the idea of a portable bakery, and the cheesecake in particular was delicious!

But the real test came when we spotted cream teas for sale at the local church. For the princely sum of £3, you could enjoy 1 and a half scones with cream, jam, and of course a cup of tea.

I'm not going to lie, they weren't the most delicious scones I've ever had, they came with whipped cream instead of clotted (shocking!) but they were still pretty good! And the whole point was that as we sat eating our traditional tea time treat, watching as the mayor went on the swing boats, still dressed in the traditional outfit, we felt that the Great British Summer had arrived.

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