Travel Tips

Each Year our local Arts Alive Group makes the decorations to be suspended from the roof of the indoor Markets. The year the theme was based on featherd fowl and the results were outstanding.

After the weekend Festival is over these amazing creations remain in place to delight the thousands of people who shop in the market throughout the year until the new ons for the nesxt Festival make an entrance.

In a shaded corner of the Castle grounds tables laden with a selection of garden vegetables were set up and childrenwereinvited to make their own creations . Some of their handiwork was then sold for charity.

Children seem to be drawn like magnets to ruins!

The main programme of the festival is all about food - locally produced, sustainable food; finding a balance between local/airmiles and support for growers on other continents under the Fair Trade Scheme. Once they have tucked into an organic beef burger children want to play and there is plenty for them to do , see, and ehjoy in safe surroundinggs

Inside visitors have plenty of food to sample at stalls where local produces sell their hot cooked produce - afterwards they can sit down and watch chefs from local hotels, restaurants and pubs demonstrate the arts of cooking in the Festival Kitchen.

If you prefer good old fashioned fish and chops in Market Street you will find the oldest surving row of shops in Abergavenny and the long established, but bang up to date, Fish Cafe and restaurant. .

There is nearly always a queue!

As one of the towns Millennium projects a Mural depicting the town history was painted here in a building in the High Street.
The area immediatel next to the building is known to some as Red Square because even today this is where groups often gather at the start of local campaigns - or to sing Carols. It is also where the Salvation Army Band play Carols at Christmas time.

As well as food local crafts are also on display and for sale. here is a colourful ceramics stall.

The French game of Petanque has been fostered through the links forged between Abergavenny and its French "twin" town. Beaupréau, SE of Nantes.
France is one of the most popular holiday destinations for British people and the game is now very popular with families who enjoy a game on a French beach. In some French holiday houses we have had our "own" proper petanque Piste.