7 June 2008 - Tour of Wye

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The village of Wye, near Ashford in Kent, was the venue for a busy day's dancing. We were accompanied by Old Star Morris, a border morris side from Eastbourne.

The day started somewhat predictably in the Crown Coffee shop. Our first stand was at the Farmers' Market which featured the usual mixture of vegetables, old meat and tasty titbits - but enough about the Kettle Bridge dancers, the market was good as well. We were under strict instructions not to block the entrance to the Post Office which actually looked like it was someone's house. The postman wasn't very impressed, though, as he had to park his van up the road and lug his sacks an extra 20 yards.
There was a small but appreciative crowd who enjoyed our dancing. As a novelty, Kettle Bridge joined in with one of Old Star's dances but the sight of the ladies brandishing rolling-pin shaped sticks made me somewhat nervous!

Wye is a fairly compact village so it was no distance to our next venue, the New Flying Horse pub. An unusual feature of the pub was the 2005 Chelsea Flower Show garden featuring a quaint picture-postcard cottage. The dancing area was the pub's patio which had a number of small trees that the dancers had to negotiate to the amusement of the rather disappointingly small crowd. This was followed by a ploughman's lunch and a drink or two.

Then it was on to the Lady Joanna Thornhill’s (Endowed) Primary School. Here we were treated to a faultless Maypole dance performed by the children followed by a Year 6 rendition of Prescot, as taught by our very own Margaret.
Old Star did their stuff for the large crowd and Kettle Bridge completed the entertainment with our signature Yellow Rose dance. As usual, this was greatly appreciated by the audience.

A short walk across the school field found us at Luckley House, a sheltered housing scheme. Here we entertained the residents with a few dances, including a reprise of Yellow Rose and the audience-participation Churchtown. Thankfully, all the dancers lived to tell the tale.

The final stop on our circular tour of Wye was back outside the Crown Coffee shop where the day had started. It proved very difficult to find a suitable spot to dance but we finally resorted to dancing in the road. Just as we were finishing, a crowd started to appear but we were overdue for our cuppa! We made our way into the Coffee Shop for well-earned refreshment and were ushered into the musty dungeons / coal cellar. They had obviously not heard of our reputation because the shop quickly ran out of cake!

All in all, an excellent day's dancing and many thanks are due to all who organised it, especially Margaret.

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Kettle Bridge Clogs web site by Stephen Cordery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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