Village celebrates heritage at the Autumn Equinox with local produce

Three Rivers District’s family festival, in Abbots Langley, is a fun-packed day promoting the local growers, food producers and celebrating its orchard history. This is done in a friendly and intimate atmosphere of music, fun, games, laughter and the occasional brolly.

Gathered on School Mead, in a lesser known part of Abbots Langley, there has been an autumn festival here since 2015 (formerly known as Applefest) promoting local food aims against a backdrop of live music and performances, local groups and societies, and activities for all ages.

The event is an opportunity to pick up fresh fruit and vegetables, heritage fruit trees ideal for planting at this time of year, to sample locally grown and produced food, beer and cider.

In the lead up to the day itself, younger festival-goers are encouraged to make scarecrows which appear around the village and in the High Street, is a treasure hunt to find apples in the local shops.

Previous events and activities have included puppet shows, drumming, petting zoo, cycle routes, falconry displays, face painting, fun fair, apple-pressing, scarecrow competition, and archery.

This year Autumnfest will be this Saturday, 21 September between 11am and 4pm.

Leader of the Council, Sara Bedford said:” I am delighted to see this festival continue to attract more groups of people. It’s good to see them having fun and buying local products.  I would like to personally thank the members of the festival for carrying on with this initiative.”