Pressing times need pressing measures with apple juice for all at Milton Country Park’s autumn festival
Milton Country Park hosted the eighth Autumn Festival this weekend and in doing so breathed new life into that overworked phrase ‘entertainment for all the family’.
The day’s proceedings began (after ‘careful consideration’) at 10.30am, with live music starting at 12: ongoing play themes for youngsters were matched by all-ages canoeing, bushcraft activities, fishing, pond dipping, storytelling, campfire stories and a ‘Little Gym’.
Dozens of food stalls and craft tents provided local food and drinks, and handmade gifts from wood-turned artwork to baby clothes to garden pots to art to wood-carved pens to jewellery.
The crowd for the day was estimated by organisers Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust to be between three and four thousand. A significant number seemed to be crowded round some apple press next to the orchard, where on-the-hour demonstrations of how to make apple juice were being given by a team headed by David Harris.
“The orchard was acquired by Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust about ten years ago,” said David. “It needed some work, and Sarah [Harris, project manager for Milton Country Park] got some people together.
“It was 20 trees seven years ago, it’s 40 or 50 now, there’s every natural species of apple here - around 50 in total. They’re all English apple trees local to East Anglia.
“There was a press on the site and we started doing apple pressing from the first year of the festival eight years ago. Three quarters of the apples we use for the day’s pressing are from the orchard, there wasn’t quite enough so we went round the village and got some from the Park & Ride site too.”
How’s the harvest been, given we’ve had so much drought?
“It’s not been too bad a crop this year, I’d say.”
The music started with Leo Howse, who was followed by The Cambridge UK Funk Band, Codename Colin, Worldly and BIG 10. The latter is a ska band who knocked out favourites to an enthusiastic audience.
Some of the efforts at between-songs banter were perhaps more suited to another type of venue.
“Hands up if you’re in love with someone!” said the singer to the crowd, which is not necessarily the obvious question for an audience of parents and children: hardly any hands went up but that didn’t stop the dancing for classics like Frankie Valli’s ‘I Love You Baby’ and ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’; The Special’s ‘Too Much Too Young’ and Dexys Midnight Runners’ ‘Gino’.
Sarah Harris said of the occasion: “We couldn’t run the event without the volunteers, around 25 of them - most are at the apple press! The orchard is a community project which has had a new lease of life since 2014. Every year we pick the junior rangers apples and juice them - it pretty much all gets drunk at the festival.”
Volunteer Colin Myles added: “The children chop the apples, press them, and drink the juice, earwigs and grass and all.”
“We like to make sure there’s no earwigs involved,” interjects Susan, adding: “We have a tiny full-time team, and this is a very important fund-raiser for us as the winters can be quieter, so it’s heart-warming to see so many families out enjoying themselves.”
- Don’t miss the picture special with photos by Keith Heppell in the Cambridge Independent on sale on Wednesday.
