Sausages, Chocolate and Pop!

There’s lots of things to do across Norfolk throughout the year, and often there are several great events going on at the same time, especially in and around Norwich. This weekend saw the Food and Drink Festival, the inaugural Norwich Chocolate Festival and also Reload music festival.

We managed to get to all of these events as well as packing in a full weekend of parental duties (taxi, football coaching, taking them to parties, shopping, cleaning, following the kids around the house to keep the house tidy….etc.) Okay, Mrs NP went off for a fun weekend at Reload and I did the rest ably hindered by the boys! It would be remiss of us not to mention that also going on this weekend was the wonderful Heritage Open Days too that sadly we couldn’t squeeze it in; Sometimes the weekends are not long enough!

Here’s a few pictures from each of these events. We’ve added more on our Facebook page.

The Norfolk Food Festival was located in Chapefield Gardens. A selection of local food produce stores, young farmers, a tractor a combine harvester, and (our favourite) the BATTLE OF THE BANGERS! Sample sausages from 10 different local producers and vote for your favourite. Congratulations to Archers, the winners of the winning sausage 2015. All the sausages were lovely, and it was tough to chose a favourite (we all chose a different sausage as our personal winner), so we had to sample them all a few times to, y’know, be sure we were happy with our choice!

Farm machinery above, the Battle of the Bangers enclosure below

On to the Chocolate Festival! Located at Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form School (the former Fire Station in Bethel St, Norwich), Norwich’s first Chocolate Festival celebrated and showcase the diversity of fine chocolate with a wide variety of fine chocolate exhibitors. It was great to see local producers like BoojaBooja and Gnaw alongside

Think I might have to get some rusty tool chocolate, like these above, for my shed! Choccies looking too good to eat, below.

Over the weekend the ReLoad Festival took place at the Norfolk Showground. Two days jam-packed of hit musical artists primarily from the 1980s. Bad Boys, Kenny Thomas, Limahl, Simon & Oscar from Ocean Colour Scene, Howard Jones, Marc Almond, M People, Billy Ocean, UB40, Altered Images, Katrina & the Waves, Cheryl, Mike & Jay from Bucks Fizz, The Beat, Jimmy Somerville, Rick Astley, Level 42, and finally Boomtown Rats. That’s a lot of pop!