Watercress Festival

Today was the day of the Watercress Festival in Alresford. I believe there's a competition for eating watercress (which seems a bit mild compared with our Devon competition for eating stinging nettles). There were stalls up and down all the streets and a variety of entertainments going on.

I liked this colourful Morris troop but assumed that the blue faces were a new innovation. Looking into it, it seems it's an adaptation of the black face paint with regard to racism concerns (it's thought in some circles that Morris may be a corruption of Moorish). 

The lovely weather brought loads of people out and it was very crowded. I've added an extra of the old fire station. These days it's used as a framing workshop but it was good to see it with a vintage fire engine 'on station'.