Events Round-Up: Food Festival, Opening Of The Horse Steps, And Louth In Bloom

July 13th 2014

Louth In Bloom planters

Children from the Little Ducklings Nursery in North Thoresby placed a variety of plants in their planter, on the corner of Kidgate and Aswell Street. This is one of two planters maintained by local schoolchildren this year for Louth In Bloom. Judging of this year's awards will take place on 17th July.

The Mayor, Andrew Leonard, and the Mayor's Serjeant Glenn Darnell, and town Clerk Linda Blankley were also on hand. The Mayor had just opened the Louth Food Festival.

Louth Food Festival

This year the annual food festival stretched from Mercer Row to half-way up Eastgate, and it featured over eighty stalls. Not all of them were food-based, some of them were craft stalls, but few were the kind of stalls that appear on a regular basis every week.

There was also a programme of live entertainment, including music from Connor Bannister, Honeysuckle, Loop Cycle, Belle Blue and Katmandu, and cookery demonstrations by Debbie Kenyon. I didn't catch the Earthbound Misfits, but according to the programme they were around as well, providing their own brand of street theatre.

Grand opening of the Horse Steps and Aswell Hole

In practice the Horse Steps and Aswell Hole have been open a few weeks already, but it's nice to have an event to mark the end of a long regeneration project. In fact it's been 14 years in coming, from the initiation of the project to regenerate the other end of Springside to the completion of the Horse Steps project. The rain kept threatening to pour down, but in the end it didn't ruin the event.

The opening was well attended, and there was lots on offer: horse rides, hobby horse decorating, rag tree dressing (which is an old custom for getting rid of ailments), and well dressing. The latter two are a little pagan, and the Gatherums Regeneration Group have proposed making the well dressing an annual event. I don't have a picture of it because it was so popular, all I would have been photographing would have been the backs of a crowd of people. It involves pressing flowers, leaves and stones into damp clay to make a picture. There isn't actually an open well. The regeneration group decided against opening up the springs due to cost and concerns about vandalism.

Five information boards were unveiled at the event that tell the history of the area. The project was funded by LCC, ELDC, and the Heritage Lottery Fund.