Harvest Time at Malvern

The Malvern Autumn Show is always a celebration of harvest time, particularly the local cider apples and perry pears like those in the picture. Did you know the Three Counties Showground has the national collection of perry pears? I must try to find them. If you're staying in the area, you might like to follow this cider and perry trail :)

The show starts next Saturday and already Deb Bird is hard at work putting together her next show garden which like the others will have an edible theme. Thank goodness all of them will be in a tent, seeing some more miserable weather is forecast for the next couple of days!

Currently I'm not sure if I'll be at the show owing to family commitments. However, Ann Somerset Miles will be blogging live from the event (probably in her many blogging guises!) and Mark Diacono is firmly part of the weekend's programme. With Deb in attendance too (do go and say hello!), it looks like there's plenty of opportunity for an informal get together over the weekend. I'll round up any posts I find afterwards, and fingers crossed I get to see you there.

Do let me know if you're going (and the day) and I'll put up a list below, so you can keep an eye out for each other...

Update - here's the posts I've found so far:
Ann Somerset Miles with her Dobies hat on ;)
Patient Gardener
The Inelegant Gardener

PlantPassion was also there (no blog post as yet) and several from UK Veg Gardeners.

Free Accommodation Available

Way back in June I received the following email from Julia Goodfellow-Smith:

I’ve just stumbled across your blog about meeting at the garden shows held in Malvern.

My husband and I are keen gardeners and have recently moved to Malvern – just a mile or so, I’d guess, from the showground and ½ mile from Great Malvern train station. We’re also couchsurfers – see www.couchsurfing.com – so that means that we’re happy to put up gardeners visiting the show, free of charge.

I can’t see how to add a comment to your blog, so thought I’d let you know so that you can add us to your accommodation section, if you like.

I promised Julia I'd not only add her kind offer to the Accommodation page, I'd also let you know about it closer to the show. For those of you not familiar with the couch surfing concept, there's loads of generous folk around the world who offer complete strangers a bed for the night, or to show them around their town or city. You can find what's available via the above link to the website.

If that sounds a bit scary, couch surfers are encouraged to write about their experiences with their hosts, so any potentially dodgy ones get weeded out very quickly. My friend C talks very warmly about the people she's put up for the night at her home in Bath via this scheme.

Since I last looked at the website in June, it seems you have to join up in order to find out what accommodation is on offer and where. I did notice there were a couple of others available in and around Malvern, so this could be just the thing for you if you fancy a more personal and budget stay with people who like to welcome visitors and know the area well. Be sure to let Julia know how you found out about the scheme ;)

My thanks goes to Julia for getting in touch and reminding me this option is available :)