Everyone in Twinning now knows about the infamous journey via Le Shuttle, to Neukirch Vluyn in 2023! Songs have been written about it and rumour even has it that a famous director is making a feature film called “The Darkest Train”. Anyway, I digress. This year our intrepid team was full of hope for a really good time.
The journey aside, we had actually thoroughly enjoyed our time at Martinsmarkt and so were really looking forward to repeat or even improve on the experience. Cider didn’t sell very well last year, and neither did apple pies. It turns out that our German friends are not cider drinkers and grow even more apples than we can imagine. So this year we concentrated on marmalade, especially prepared in the Lorna Joy marmalade factory, as well as mince pies, a walnut tray bake, from Sally’s bakery, Christmas puddings (from a real factory) and a number of other tasty British treats.

And so on Friday 1st of November, our little team consisting of Lorna Joy, who, having heard about last year’s Shuttle debacle, opted to fly, and Isabella Wright, along with Udo Dölz, who, undeterred risked it all again, but this time it couldn’t have been more efficient, phew!
We all arrived in Neukirchen Vluyn in good time to be wonderfully received by our various hosts, and this time we really did have a lovely traditional evening meal. One of the best aspects of twinning is that our hosts have become special friends, and enjoy our visit as much as we do.

The official start time for Saturday was 1:00 pm and we arrived in plenty of time together with our twinning friends to jointly set up the market stall, and many hands certainly made light work. We were blessed with beautiful weather and so there were plenty of visitors to our stand. It was a particular pleasure to have so many visitors from CHORact, the choir who had visited Buckingham on the previous weekend, for their wonderful concert with the Lenborough Singers in the Roxburgh Hall at Stowe. Everything was selling well and marmalade was first to go.

Throughout Saturday there were music performances in the Dorfkirch, organised by our friend Rüdiger Eichholz, master of music for Neukirchen Vluyn, and then at 5pm it was my turn to play for an hour. It was my third year and this time the local sound engineer really did me proud by connecting my small amp into the main sound system. Many of our twinning and CHORact friends came to see me play and even my own cousin Claudia and her family. Claudia was actually born in Vluyn!

Sales had gone so well that on Sunday (another lovely day) we took delivery of more marmalade made by our friend Gerd Messner, and Lorna really excelled herself by baking about 50 scones at the home of her host Karin. With clotted cream kindly provided by Christian Berges, we were once again in business, and by the end of the day we had actually sold out of everything, thanks to those lovely cakeaholics from Neukirchen Vluyn. Closing time was 7pm and again we had plenty of help from our local friends so that we were fully packed up very quickly, aided of course by not having to pack any produce!

Sunday ended with a lovely meal in a local restaurant, organised by Christian and Dorothe and of course included our lovely hosts. Many thanks to Christian for the pictures.
This year we all decided to extend our stay for another couple of days so Lorna visited friends in Berlin while Isabella and I enjoyed some extra time with our hosts, Bruni, Günter and Christel. I must mention another amazing coincidence. During our chats, it transpired that both Christel and I have ancestors with the same surname who actually lived in the same town, so we could even be distant relatives! How wonderful is that? Below are a few pictures of the beautiful town of Xanten, I visited with my good friend and host, Günter Fischer.

I must just say a huge thank you to Lorna and Isabella, who both worked did all the clever stuff on our stall. Isabella and I returned home on Wednesday and had an uneventful journey, but spent the day in the car recounting the lovely time we had, and even talking about next year…