Off to Tenbury to make preparations for tomorrow’s auctions, particualrly for the media visits. I’m hoping to promote the Mistletoe Festival (which is on Saturday 1st) but I know very well that most of the media are only interested in the auctions, particularly this year’s changes – the auction has finally moved out of town from the old cattle market site. This is not a good thing for Tenbury – but has been expected for some years – see mistletoe Blogs passim.
The official explanation for this year is that the Cattle Market site is virtually unusable – with Severn-Trent Water digging holes all over the place and various other problems, it’s probably just not practical to hold the auctions there. But the threat of redevelopment of the site is still real – and so this move out of town may not be temporary.
So off I go to the new site which is on a sports ground close to little Hereford, a few miles to the west of Tenbury (and not to be confused with ‘Big’ Hereford – which is much further away to the SW). If you’re looking at the multimap link – the red circle marks the spot – I know that should be obvious but I had to explain this to a journalist yesterday… Obviously not an investigative one….
It’s a horrible day – dark, drizzling and generally cold. The site is, as Nick Champion has told me on the phone, large – plenty of space for the stock to be laid out and for vehicles to park, turn and (at the old site) to cause chaos during the auctions.
Only Nick there today, surveying the newly arrived mistletoe stock in the rain (see pic – note the romantic dead lorry trailers in the mist). We have a brief chat, largely about the media due tomorrow (ITV This Morning and SKy News) and local orchards where they might go to see mistletoe au naturel.
I have a few in mind already, Nick suggests some others and I toddle off to talk to the local farmers – ending up at (the slightly muddy) Little Hereford Farm where the Stevens have their dairy herd – and where there are mistletoe-filled orchards that they are quite happy for ITV to film on site in the morning.
Off to Tenbury to warm up…