The Nottingham Bear Fair.
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Yesterday we traded at one of our favourite fairs of the year, the Nottingham Bear Fair at the lovely Patchings Arts Centre. It was definately a challenge to get there, reminiscent of two years ago when we didn't in fact succeed in getting there at all. The forecast for yesterday was very mixed, some places were going to have heavy rain and others, heavy snow. Unfortunately for us to get from where we live, Cheshire, to where the fair is, Nottinghamshire, you have to get accross a rather large hump in the middle of the country known as The Pennines!! What was heavy rain at the bottom turned to heavy, (and I mean heavy!) snow on the way up. We our first two attempts were unsuccessful, at one point we were following a snow plough which helped but unfortunately he turned off (very inconsiderate I thought) and so we had to turn back again. Our third attempt was via Ashbourne and Belper which is a longer way round but not quite as high. By this time we had accepted that we were going to be late, we set off at just after 6am and two hours later hadn't progressed very far! We were determined though that we were going to get there and so we persevered through snow, rain, slush and fog!! We finally arrived at around 10.20am and our lovely loyal collectors were waiting for us so the journey was worth it and lots of Haven Bears found new homes. The rain continued off and on all day so thankfully the return journey was less stressful, although there was still a lot of snow around the roads were much better. We did pass around six vehicles abandoned in hedges and ditches so clearly some people didn't fare quite as well. Hopefully that's the end of Winter, which does seem to have lasted forever!
The fair was very well attended considering the awful weather and 
everyone had a great day. We do have a couple of bears left and I have put these on the New Bears page of the Website Shop today so do have a look and learn more about them. Our next fair is a brand new event, The Berwick Bear Fair on 21st April in the lovely border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. This is a new area for us and we are really looking forward to the visit. To learn more about it visit the Fairs Page of the Website.