A Christmas Fayre in the streets of Milestones. Traditional Xmas market stalls in the comfort of the huge indoor heritage museum, no rain, no wind, warm and dry. Joyful!

Firstly, let me state right up front "street" photography is not my bag and this is reflected in the pictures that I managed to obtain during my wander round the market and that have ended up in this blog posting. Never-the-less here we go...

There were, as you would expect, a large number of stalls selling everything from affordable nicknacks to more upmarket stuff like jewellery and lots of comestibles to take home for your Christmas feast.

The stall holders were quite characterful and engaging and made interesting subjects to photograph though my timing was off and I kept just missing them in interesting poses when interacting with their customers. Lack of practice on my part!

I had the same problem with their customers, either standing in just the wrong place or snapping the picture just too late and missing action. I need to hone my senses of location and anticipation.

I was sometimes able to push my way through the people crowded round the stalls to try and get to see some action, but I'm not sue that helped either. 

Mind you I did manage to get a snap through the window of The Baverstock Arms, the in-house Milestones Victorian pub, of the barman preparing for opening. It still serves alcoholic refreshments at lunchtime, though how it would cope with the crowds attending the Fayre I do know as it is actually tiny.

Some of the stalls were in less popular locations than others but even then applying the principles of putting people in a line and using contrasting colours from the colour wheel in the image did not help. It's a pretty picture but boring, what I like to think of as a "record shot", one for the album.

Some of the stalls were riotously colourful and worth a snap just for that alone.

What was interesting was that they had several Xmas trees dotted around the streets of the museum each decorated in the style of a particular era. Here we have an example of one from the 1900's and one from the 1930's.

There was a nice cafe which had been set up in one small corner of the concourse here seen just before opening and being swamped by visitors to the fayre! Nightmare!

Finally, there were loads of staff and volunteers dressed in period costumes or Santa's little helpers patrolling the streets and keeping an eye on things. This elf kindly agreed to pose for me, though I think she was having a busy time of it.

In conclusion, seen as a set of Street Photos what I got fell well short of the mark, but viewed as a collection of pictures that captured some great memories of a wonderful day out they were spot on. Something to look back on a lovely experience.