Appleby Fair

There are so many things in my life that I haven’t got round to doing that I hesitated very hard before we decided to go to Appleby Fair today.

In the end curiosity won out over guilt and we scraped together some cash by raiding Oliver’s overstuffed wallet and leaving an IOU which we need to sort out before he gets home, and went.

Appleby is a small town buried miles from everywhere in the Cumbrian fells. To get there you have got to drive upwards out of Kendal for miles and miles, which takes you along endless twisty country roads until you are almost expecting to see Mel Gibson wearing blue paint and a kilt, but of course we didn’t, actually mostly what we saw was the backs of several tractors because the weather has taken a turn for the better and agriculturally minded types have turned their thoughts to haymaking and silage.

It is a good job that Cumbria is broadly law abiding, because I think every single police officer in the county has been dispatched to Appleby. When we got there we were directed into a field which clearly belonged to a farmer of an entrepreneurial nature, who had decided not to bother with silage but to have a go at the far more lucrative practice of running a car park for a fiver a car, after which I imagine he was going to take early retirement, because there were cars and vans jammed in every inch of space and some people camping as well.

We walked from there into the town, and there were people everywhere, almost all of them gypsies.

Appleby Fair is not an organised event but a gypsy gathering and horse sale, where families meet up after long separation, horses are bought and sold, carts are raced up and down the roads, young men show off and try and make girls look at them, and drink too much in the pubs, and the police try and stop the traditional gypsy amusements of bare knuckle fighting and stealing stray bits of scrap metal.

It is an enormous, thrilling event.

As we crossed the bridge there was some kind of entertainment going on in the water, the challenge appearing to be to ride a horse over the river, which was deep enough that the horses had to swim. We watched for ages, bareback riders and dripping ponies charging enthusiastically into the icy water, submerged at some points until only their noses were visible, and then scrambling out, stamping and snorting.

There were crowds of people in the town, pushing past the tethered horses and stepping hastily out of the road as the carts flashed by. Every railing on the main street had horses tied to it, of every size and shape imaginable, some wearing the most beautiful polished silver harness. There were heavy horses with great, feathery hooves, and nimble ponies, and nervous greys with rolling eyes, and solid piebald stalwarts on the lookout for anything edible. There were mares with foals, and tiny shetlands, and they whinnied and whickered and called to one another, and up and down the road men raced in sulky carts, flying past so close that you had to be careful not to be mown down. We saw one with two laughing, hatless police officers in it, perched precariously on either side of the driver, but mostly it was an occupation for the young men who were trying not to look as though they were performing for the benefit of the pretty girls.

The girls were perhaps the most astonishing sight of the fair.

It was immediately obvious that Appleby Fair functions as a sort of gypsy matchmaking event. Everywhere we looked there were girls, tanned, long-legged and beautiful. They wore gold jewellery and vivid colours and their long hair had been artfully arranged to frame their lovely faces with flowers and ribbons and jewelled combs. Young, unmarried girls wandered in groups together, laughing and watching the racing, and smiling at the young men, and being every bit as wonderfully, elusively, desirably gypsy as any folk-singer could ever hope to imagine. Very few of them seemed to have succumbed to the persuasive attempts of the charioteers, but as we crossed the bridge we passed close to a young man gazing intently at a girl: he with flashing eyes and a white smile, and she with long dark hair and enormous hoop earrings, and he was saying softly: “I tell you, no-one need ever know.” I hope he was right.

On the hillside was an enormous market selling all manner of wonderful gypsy things, from cauldrons and horse harness to wagons and china and buckets, and it became immediately apparent that I share my taste in shopping with gypsies everywhere, because I don’t think I have ever seen so many things that I would have liked to buy all in the same place.

We saw jewelled sandals, and fur-trimmed cloaks, and painted jugs and crystal bowls and Crown Derby china, and horses and dogs everywhere. I could have bought everything, in particular I fell in love with a set of shelves shaped like a high-heeled shoe as tall as Mark and painted in gold and silver, with a mirror, and little gold chains, and lights around the edge, and there was a table which we have marked down for purchase at some later date when we have got some money, which was made of wonderful carved flowers and painted in cream and gold and made me gasp with the beauty of it. Mark said that it looked like the merry-go-round in Blackpool, and he was right, which was what I liked about it.

In the end we bought a pretty red spotted kettle, and a white china cake stand painted with gold with lots of plastic diamonds stuck on it, which Mark had to stick on all over again because most of them had come off by the time we got home, and a pot shaped like a blue strawberry with plastic diamonds, because I thought I could keep my Earl Grey teabags in it, which the man sold to us cheaply because it had a chip in it, which Mark has already mended, so that is all right: and he bought some lights for the back of the camper van, and by then we had spent all of Oliver’s money and had lots to carry so we had to go back, but we were very pleased, because they are such cheerful bright things to have, and they will remind us of the day for ever.

We walked slowly back through the crowds, looking at the horses and the little girls in their ribboned dresses and the athletic young men on the horses, and the heavy, weatherbeaten men in their jackets and hats, and the dog fell in love a dozen times over and because they were gypsies nobody was horrid about his undesirability but laughed and let him make friends in a snuffly dog sort of way.

Everywhere smelled of hawthorn blossom and horses, and the sun was warm, and all round us gypsies laughed and argued and showed their horses to each other. Mark said that it was like a modern version of the 1950s, and he was exactly right, that is a perfect description of the way it felt. We had a wonderful, wonderful time, and on the way home in the car we were almost too dazed with it all to talk to one another.

I took some photographs to show you. They don’t do any of it justice, but they help.