Stir up Sunday is past and Advent is upon us. Whether we like it or not Christmas will soon be here. If trudging round the shops looking for the perfect but unusual present is something you dread, then make your way to Norwich Cathedral anytime between Friday 12th Dec and Sunday 14th for the second Great Christmas Market.

Building on last year's popularity, the market this year is going to be far bigger and multi period. With mulled wine on sale in the cloisters, you can browse at your leisure around a wide variety of traders. Where else could you follow in the footsteps of the Wise Men and buy frankincense, myrrh, and possibly even the gold, or at least, jewellery based on designs of earlier periods? There will be a wide range of entertainment: songs from the 1940s, and the music of the trouveres. Story tellers will spin words into tales to delight young and old and Garbag, Norwich's medieval magpie, will once again hope to intrigue visitors with her tales of the relics which she may (or may not) have to show.

Traders will range between pottery, rocks and fossils, clothing and shoes of earlier times, sweets and traditional gingerbread, toys and games, sheepskins and pewter - to name but a few. One thing you can be sure of though, things on sale here won't be replicated in high street stores, nor will they be reduced in a sale on Boxing Day. 

There is excellent food for sale in the refectory, and  if the !0 am start on Friday and Saturday is not convenient, then the market doesn't open until midday on Sunday, which will allow plenty of time to attend the cathedral service first and really  prepare for Christmas.

This event is once again organised by Black Kinght Historical, and further information can be obtained from the link below:

http://www.blackknighthistorical.co.uk/diary.htm

We rounded off this season's bookings over in Wales. The Conwy Food Festival deservedly won awards last year  and we looked forward to returning to a place with such brilliant local produce. No event this season is complete without commenting on the weather, and there was plenty of it in Conwy. We had freezing winds,  sluicing downpours and it was COLD. But the welcome was warm, visitors were enthusiastic, and we had a great time.

Lady Eleanor de Burgh once again attempted to recruit young staff for her medieval kitchen and we found parents were more willing to volunteer their children than they were to come. Alys Mendio  had her portable chemist's store of medicinal herbs that would have been found in any reasonable garden as well as some of the more unusual remedies of the time and Nathaniel, Sir John Mandeville's servant, came with a pocket  full of expensive medieval spices and the intention of finding a wife. In between times he was found in the busy story telling tent, engaging both adults and children with his tall and traditional tales.

The obvious question is whether Nathaniel succeeded in his quest.  He had offers: eight sisters volunteered as a package, but his heart was smitten by a genuine spice girl who had travelled all the way from the exotic lands he had visited. Unfortunately, spices meant nothing to her and she is waiting until he has sold them all and returned, a rich man, to claim her. 

We would like to put in a word of thanks to the team who manned a brilliant bag creche all weekend and looked after various items of kit for us. This was a fantastically helpful idea by the organisers for the public to dump their bags and collect them when they were ready to leave. We hadn't come across it before but it made life much easier for serious shoppers as well as for us. With the medieval castle behind us and the sun occasionally sparkling on the River Dee estuary this event was a beautiful way to end the year's events.