All The Fun Of The Fair

Hello everyone, I hope you are having a gorgeous weekend!

As I’ve mentioned before, the week before last the children and I joined my parents for a brilliant few days at The Great Dorset Steam Fair.  A sprawling 600 acre event in the beautiful Dorset countryside, the fair is a celebration a bygone era, and of all things steam powered.  I don’t think that I have ever been to a festival or event where there is quite so much going on – there really is something for everyone and for all ages, it’s so much fun.  Plus it’s a fab history lesson for the children, to see how things were done in the old days!

The highlights for me, were as follows :

There are 4 or 5 different beer tent and stages, with music.  I saw a brilliant Kasabian cover band, and a superb Oasis cover band!  You can also see folk music, comedy music, rock music and smaller cover bands in one of the many beer tents.

The steam powered funfair is my favourite part of the fair.  Carousels, a swing carousel, swinging yachts and a mini big wheel, all powered by steam and some of them over 100 years old.  I had quite a few rides on the gallopers, and the children love the swing carousel!

Mum, Lola and I spent a couple of hours browsing the lovely craft and food tents.

The market is huge, and at one end tends be new items, but if you go deeper into it, it turns into what my dad calls an auto jumble!  Basically stalls selling all manner of junk, collectibles, tools and vintage goods.  I got lucky and came home with a few  pretty things.

The beautiful shepherds huts which were dotted throughout the site.  If I had a huge garden and money was no object, I’d have to have one of these!

The Glastonbury cider bus – so delicious!

It was such brilliant fun camping with my parents, and we were so lucky with the weather.  Just before the sun would go down every night, something magical would happen – all the lights of the funfair and the huge, majestic showman engines would all suddenly glow, and look so beautiful against the pink sky.  It’s definitely a sight worth seeing!

We went treasure hunting this morning and came back with some brilliant bits and bobs which I will snap to share with you this week, so please do pop back!

Tamsyn x