Category Archives: Events

1st Annual Abingdon Beer Festival at the Kings Head and Bell

Abingdon Beer Festival
This is what the courtyard of the Kings Head and Bell looked like a year ago (picture by Carl) …

The landlord of the Kings Head and Bell is seen here one year later with the Chairman of the Vale at the opening of the first Annual Beer Festival.

Lots of different local beers were on offer. Steve Green on his blog (Abingdon Beer) will have far more detail. He was working his way through the twenty or so beers on offer last time I saw – showing great dedication to his blog.
Abingdon Beer Festival
This afternoon the morris men were performing at the festival. Weather has been good, apart from a sudden downpour at 2:30pm – the time they were meant to start. So they started late and carried on most of the afternoon.

It gave their bagman the chance to get aquainted with quite a few young ladies. He picks them out of the crowd to be danced round.

(They will be dancing next on Saturday 11th September on Abingdon Market Place for Heritage Day. The Kings Head and Bell will also open up the King Charles room on Heritage Day.)

Abingdon Horse Show 2010

3 Replies

Abingdon Horse Show 2010
This horse show is an annual event and takes place on Rye Farm Meadow, next to the River Thames.

The Abingdon Horse Show was started in 1974 by local clubs but as people have got older responsibility has transferred to the Berkshire Downs Riding Club who have been in full charge for 4 years.
Abingdon Horse Show 2010
They now run a large and varied event with six different arenas. Three arenas are for show jumping at different levels.

The other arenas are for ridden showing or leading by hand showing.

It was a hot day and those not taking part could laze in the sun.

A thousand paper cranes

5 Replies

On August 6, 1945 a 9700-pound uranium bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima.

Sixty Five years later visitors from Hiroshima – on their way to Coventry – came to Abingdon to present a letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima to the Mayor of Abingdon.

During this week the former Adams shop has become a place of peace where people make origami cranes. Most only make one…

but these three children and their mum made forty paper cranes last night.

There is a japanese saying that one who folds 1,000 cranes is granted a wish, and Abingdon is making a 1,000 cranes for Peace in the shop.
Visitors from Hiroshima
Anne Dodd visited Hiroshima last year and the visit is partly a result of the friends she made.

Wikipedia has a fuller story of Sadoko Sasaki from Hiroshima who tried to make a thousand paper cranes while suffering from Leukemia – the atomic bomb disease as her mother called it.

(This Abingdon Blog is having a rest for a week – back soon. In the mean time visit How to Fold a Paper Crane.)

Alzheimer Society’s charity Stall