What a brilliant turnout at Goggs Mill yesterday, for Kick Start Fakenham’s Great Duck Race. The guys did some absolutely sterling work, with extra promotion coming via Radio Norfolk’s Sunday morning ‘Treasure Quest’ show (one of their clues was hidden at the site) and an interview with Kick Start’s Mark live on air just before the race.

Kick Start raised £456, with prizes totalling £175 going to the first, second and third placed ‘duck owners’. Lovely weather, everybody smiling and joining in the spirit of the day and really good attendance. Result!

Part of the new ‘central hub’ website I’m creating for Fakenham has a page selling promotional merchandise (well, I’ve got to maximise my ROI as they say in Dragons’ Den – the site’s taking ages to create!).

If you fancy a quick preview, click on the picture on the right. It should take you to the new Fakenham shop at Spreadshirt, where you can browse through the selection of tees, hoodies and other Fakenham-branded stuff.

It’s all very tongue-in-cheek and I think it’ll strike a chord with Fakenham folk. Let me know what you think so far.

 Creake Abbey Farmers’ Market has won first place in the prestigious Eastern Daily Press Norfolk Food Awards.  The monthly market at North Creake, attached to Creake Abbey Studios, came first in the dedicated  Farmers’ Market section.

The judges said “A fantastic location in north Norfolk with an idyllic setting. This market offers an abundance of locally produced and sourced food products and gifts. The stall holders are only too pleased to share their passion and knowledge and there are lots of opportunities to try before you buy with well presented stalls“.

The market is held on the first Saturday of each month (except in January). Around 30 stall holders attend, with fresh local meat, produce, cheeses, cakes, bread, preserves, ales, juices and plants.  They’re holding a ‘Christmas Shopping Feast’ on 4th December – sounds like it’s well worth a visit!

With  Creake Abbey Farmers’ Market on 1st Saturday and the Fakenham Farmers’ Market being held on the 4th Saturday of nearly every month, our area’s well served. We have few excuses for not being able to buy quality local produce whenever we need it!

Today’s Fakenham Fair was well attended and the event was great fun. Lots of stalls, bouncy castles, local organisations and demonstrations – and the weather was very kind too!

Fantastic work by Kick Start and the Fakenham Area Partnership – well done, guys. Here’s to a successful full-blown Fakenham Carnival in 2011!!!

The Air Ambulance hovering over town centre rooftops this afternoon, attending a casualty in the market square.

Who serves the best pint of Wherry in town?

I went out to the pub last night with some friends (yes, I really do have some). I won’t say which hostelry, but we were chatting to the owner about life in general (and beer in particular) when he announced that his establishment served the ‘best pint of  Wherry in Fakenham’. His patrons had told him so many times, he told us.

I didn’t actually agree with him, but said nowt – there was no point in debating the subject and it would have been bad-mannered to disagree with him while sitting in his own pub downing a pair of his pints. However, I thought I’d see if my fellow local beer-swillers real ale connoisieurs thought the same way. Apart from Harry Hill’s favourite method of settling an argument – “FIGHT!” – there’s only one way to do it… I’ve created a new website poll.

Woodforde’s is a Norfolk brewery and their Wherry bitter is very widely available in the Fakenham area. It’s a pretty safe choice for landlords, as it’s a well-known session bitter (ie not too strong at 3.8 percent alcohol) which sells very well. Unfortunately it can be bland and as dull as dishwater if not kept well, but when served in good condition is a wonderfully fresh-tasting ale with aromatic, floral hop qualities and citrus overtones. Beautifully light and refreshing.

So which pub in town serves the best pint of the stuff? I’m interested to hear other drinkers’ opinions, so please vote in the poll on the right. If you can’t stand the stuff yourself (I realise not everybody has a beer lover’s exquisite and refined taste) but know somebody else who does, point them to this site so they can register their vote. It’s a subject very dear to many people’s hearts

Cheers!

The bluebells in Foxley Wood today.

Fakenham’s a small town. You’d think it would be easy to let everybody know when you had some news to tell. Unfortunately, I haven’t found that to be true over the years. We all seem to be involved with friends and colleagues in small groups and news doesn’t always escape into the outside world efficiently.

Newspapers like The EDP, Fakenham Times and The Fakenham Sun play their part. In fact they do a really great job in keeping us all informed. Trouble is, they can only ever print a limited snapshot of what’s going on at any one time and they don’t all pick up on the same information.  Also, there are lots of different people you need to contact when you have something happening and need to tell the world - and if your news is business related you may not be able to reach your target audience easily.

When Kick Start Fakenham held its first tentative meeting over a year ago, I mentioned the fact that there was no central point of information distribution. No single place you could go to make sure that your news reached the right people. At the time, it looked like Kick Start might provide that central point, but their website is still to be published and if the truth’s known, they’re probably finding the same old problems themselves when they need to get their info published.

So, I’ve come up with something myself. It will be launching soon

We were in Kings Lynn today, so we dropped into Beers of Europe in Setchey. It’s an amazing place for beer-lovers, as I’ve no doubt mentioned before on this blog. It’s the first visit of  this year for me, so I took the opportunity to look for some old favourites (like Fullers London Porter and Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen – a smokebeer from Bamberg) and also found some I’d been wanting to try for a while (Krušovice Cerne, a Czech dark lager).

They have a decent selection of ciders but I couldn’t find the one Lindsey, my daughter wanted (I texted her to ask if she had any requests). I did, however, find some different interesting ones as well as Asahi Black Japanese lager, which is her partner Al’s favourite. My wife, Mary chose a bottle of St. Peters Grapefruit beer, so everybody has something to sup and savour over the bank holiday weekend!

Is this thing turning into a food & drink blog? No, it’s purely coincidental that the last few posts have had something to do with eating and drinking. Now… what’s for dinner?

It’s poll time again. The last one was all about your Fakenham shopping experience.  It was pretty split (see the graphic on the right) , with the only agreement seeming to be that it has definitely changed -  whether that’s for the better or worse isn’t totally clear!

Right, as it’s poll time and it’s nearly poll time (if you see what I mean) I thought I’d ask you which way you’d be voting in the general election. Your votes here are only tallied – I don’t take a record of who you are - so it’s an anonymous headcount. Please feel free to add your comments to this post, whether you’re afilliated to a political party or just a plain vanilla citizen like me.

Have the Yellows kept you mellow? Are you starting to see Red? Feeling Blue? See the new poll in the right menu…