We left at 10.45am with 12632 miles on the cars milometer – heading for Allensmore (near Hereford) for this ancient ritual. The purpose of Wassailing is to encourage the spirits into ensuring a good harvest the following season. It takes place on the twelfth night after Christmas and involves a visit to a nearby orchard for singing, dancing, drinking and general merrymaking.

We reached the rather high River Lug at 12.30pm. Ledbury had a pub called ‘The Cock Of Tupsley’ just inside, a woman walking 4 tiny little dogs (all of different breeds) was being pulled along by them, and I was told Hereford is famous for the Map O Mundy (a map of the known world in the 11th Century); there was a turning down a very thin and muddy lane – which was the wrong 1, Mum wound a window down and asked a man in a van (who had a wonderful local rural accent), got directions, and we made it to a place called The Three Horseshoes at 12.50pm.

After a brief nap in the room we got in the car and headed for the village of Much Marcle, and Westons Cider Mill where the Wassail event was going to take place. We saw a Polish supermarket, I noticed a reindeer and sleigh shaped light on the side of a church, a golden rooster on top of another church spire, we passed several fields of apple trees, fields of hops, went through some extremely narrow windy lanes, saw huge amounts of countryside beneath these lanes, it was beginning to get dark, an extremely tall radio mast was in a field, and we found this place rather suddenly once round a corner.

There was a very big wooden pole with a model of a partially eaten apple on top of it, and inside – was very authentic, I saw little books called ‘What Caesar did for my salad’, glasses of hot mulled cider fir sale, enormous stacks of bottles and cans, a board that said ‘Don’t sit under the Apple tree with anyone else but me’ was behind the bar/desk, bobble hats, jam, lemon curd, marmalade, vinegar and honey were for sale, and I noticed laminated posters about the Wassail (and was invited to take 1), boxes of 17.6 pints of Rosies Pig Cloudy Cider, and then we were greeted by a woman called Ruth – who warned us that they are a working factory and there’d be puddles (and several other things I forgot. We were led to the front of a house called The Bounds (built in 1611), and told this was where a man called Henry Weston started cider making in 1880, Charles Wallwyn Radcliffe Cooke (1841->1911) was an English farmer, cider producer and Conservative politician, Will Smith became the 1st salesperson, and the Westons still own the place; we were shown a press from 1924, had thresh explained, and then Buker presses (which can press 20 tonnes of fruit every 90 minutes). Little barrels called Costerals (which is apparently a really regional term) was how workers were paid their wages (6 pints of beer every day), and then we were led up some metal stairs to the current vats and told each vat is named and we were going to be shown Norma (and up some more metal stairs Ruth asked if I was doing a report for something – so I explained the notepad – and she was very nice and said if I needed to check anything I could).

Up in this room (which only works from September to December), rollers that are used to sort the fruit were shown to us (bad 1’s are put in to a biomass plant), and then the fruit is chopped, put into 7 tonne mash tanks, 10 tonnes of mash goes into the press (and the noise in this room was like 2 jet engines), 1 ½ tonnes of pomace comes out, goes to biomass boilers and they buy back the CO2 to go into cider, fermentation takes 3->4 weeks, and the 5 huge oak vats up there each hold 5500 litres (they’re all named – Jessie, Hilda, Lucy, Edith, and Dora – after daughters of someone I forgot),

…and are used twice per year; there was a whiteboard with the names of the barrels on it (we had some dark brown oak barrels that come from Coca Cola pointed out), and along some more metal stairs were 43 more vats (vintage cider matures for 8->12 months and another cider matures for 18 months) – the biggest is called Squeak, who is 200 years old and holds 336000 litres, others are called Ironclad, Darby, Joan, Hereford, and Pip (who is the 2nd biggest and holds 42000 gallons/190000 litres) – and Pip (with lots of dribbles down the side) was remarked on by 1 of the tour participants, and then how they clean the vats wad described (and all are English oak apart from Ironclad).

The cross flow filtration unit was opposite the laboratory/had lots of statistics of volatile acidity on its walls; and then down some more metal stairs and into another room – where a film began with Helen Thomas describing how her great grandfather started things in the 1880’s, they now export to 40 countries, another man explained the orchards, that 350000 tonnes from 30 different growers are used, some sheep were shown, 40 tonnes of apples are pressed per hour, and another man explained the rest of the process – emphasising that they’ve stayed independent. Then a video of some previous wassailing was shown (apparently 1000 people are expected this evening); there’s 300 different types of cider apple that fall into 4 different categories, pear trees take 3->5 years to come into harvest, and further along the corridor she explained the 3 different types of pear, 60% of the cider the UK exports comes from Herefordshire, they’re on a 7% increase in sales each year, and 43% of all cider drunk is fruit cider now. We were led across the front of the pub again, shown the fermenting vats that each hold 120000 litres, their biggest customer is Germany, ‘Roses Pug’ is their oldest ‘car’ delivery van, Prince and Reginald are the 2 oldest vats, and then inside (in a sort of shop/bar area) everyone was given several different types of cider to sample (I got apple juice) – 1 was 8.2% alcohol and another was 6.5%. I noticed a few people wearing bobbly hats, ‘Flat Tyre’ was a rhubarb cider, 2 boys (10 years old ish) were wearing interesting hats/balaclavas, and by 6.30pm – it was pitch black outside, Mum had bought something for our next door neighbour, things were getting quite crowded, and almost everyone was holding some form of alcoholic drink.

I saw a teenager with a selfie stick, lots of bobbly hats (of various shapes and sizes), some drum beating was coming from somewhere, men (with boots that had bells on, suits, black boots, and with some sort of black face paint on were intermittently dispersed throughout – and at 7.05pm, a man began yelling things from the front of the buildings about the wassail and not to wave our torches around, and then the wassailing began – with men dancing around inside a circle made inside the crowd.

We were each given a real flaming torch to hold, Mum quietly said ‘oh goodness’ when nearly dropping it, we were led around some lanes, and in a field, a man who had a very loud voice began lighting 12 different little piles of wood, said (among other things) something about passing a bowl round and everything drinking from it, there was a man covered in a sheet with a skull on top of it, the kids from the crowd came out, someone said that £3500 was raised for the hospice, several minutes later the man was addressing an apple tree with lots and lots of toast slices stuck on it by children, then Morris dancers danced and we all sang the words from the laminated sheets we’d been given, and that continued until about 8.20pm, when 1 of the men wished everyone a very good new year.

Everyone returned to their cars (it was pitch black); we were back at The Three Horseshoes Inn by 9.15pm and had cheese sandwiches and chips. I did the rest of my French lessons outside (where the Wi-Fi worked) while Mum read through my notes, then assisted her with connecting to the Wi-Fi so she could do hers, she did them, we went back up to the room, got our pyjamas on, and lights were out at 11.20pm.