On one of his many long drives the other week, The Boy was listening to some or other grown up boring chat show type radio programme and was highly entertained to listen to a discussion on the appalling state of the ice and size at Winchester’s temporary ice rink.  He was also amused by the very eccentric local MP that came out in defense of it all.

A week or so later it was all forgotten as Mum and I made a plan to visit a Christmas Market.  Something must have stuck as without discussing our plans with him, we decided we all had to go to Winchester.

As we drove down we had the chat again and wondered about the state of the ice now.  Had it improved?  Was it any bigger?  Burning questions, naturally!We arrived just before 11.30 and Winchester was already heaving.  We randomly found a car park but the pay and display rules were very complicated.  Thankfully there was a nice friendly traffic warden lady who informed us that it was free parking and not only that, pointed us to one of the two spaces left!

We were officially fans of Winchester!!

Then we worked our way out onto the packed main road.  My love kind of disappeared a little.  So many people and so little room due to the junk stalls lining the street.  That was not the kind of Christmas market that I was expecting at all.  It sucked.  We decided to walk along to the Cathedral and just have a general mooch.  We were also hopeful there would be a much nicer market there.

Thankfully there was!

The first stall sold beautiful wreaths with dried fruit and cinnamon and the like.  Things were looking up.

Then the rest was a bit lame to be honest.  There was a mulled wine shop or two…

… and the huts looked all Christmas market-y, but it was mostly junk.  There was also only a handful of food stalls so the queues were miles long for anything warm and yummy looking.  Boo.

My one BIG let down is that there was no suckling pig to be found.  How is it a Christmas Market without a pig on a spit?  Ridiculous!  Yes, there was mulled wine.  Yes, there was German sausages.  But no hot, pork sandwich?  Fail.  BIG time.

I am however happy to report that they appear to have extended the rice rink as it was bigger than a postage stamp, and the ice was frozen.

We had a lovely little walk around a nice new town, and we always enjoy the people watching that goes with these kinds of things.  Especially when the lady in front of us in the queue for the mulled wine was telling her best friend all about the fact she was cheating on her husband (ahead in the queue with their daughter) with the lady in the red coat at the back of the queue with her respective husband.  Naturally we had to turn around and look too, and well, lets just say we didn’t get it.  She was rough as houses.  We did however observe her getting a pat on the behind from her lover as they walked by each other hand in hand with their husbands a little later.

We do love a good bit of scandal!!