First Boot, Craft and Produce Fair of 2025
As the Friday before the first Boot, Craft and Produce Fair of 2025 on 6th April was the warmest day of the year up to then, it was not a surprise that on the Sunday the blue sky attracted a large number of stallholders.
IT IS A long established self-evident truth that when the days before a Boot, Craft and Produce Fair being held on Martello Field are warm, that if the sun honours us with its presence on the Sunday, the number of stallholders will be large, even though the air may not be as warm as the blue sky may suggest.
The West Martello Field was populated with the maximum number of permitted stall holders, a number which was by far the largest for a first fair of the year. The previous best was in 2018 when there were 79 stalls, and significantly more than the 53 in April last year which itself until this April was only bettered on 3 occasions - 2021 (75), 2019 (55) and 2018.
There seemed to be not so many unusual items for sale, although there were a many items of sporting equipment available, footballs, golf clubs with or without a carrying bag, a surfeit of golf balls (has some one lost too many and given up playing?), squash rackets, fishing rods and nets, wooden dumbbells etc.
There were the normal stalls offering gardening and DIY equipment including unusually one stall offering a large selection of tins of paint.
Unexpectedly, the blue skies encouraged several stallholders to offer plants, such as tomato, cucumber, geraniums and other tender plants; many of which would not normally be available until the May Fair, but the unseasonally warm weather brought their sale forward.
