This year’s Lichfield Food Festival was the biggest ever and it even made it into The Guardian’s top ten list of places to visit over the bank holiday weekend. It would be impossible for me to list all the incredible and varied stalls that were here for the bank holiday weekend, many of them local producers and suppliers, but I can share with you my journey around the show on Bank Holiday Monday.

I did take a brisk walk into town with my hubby and the dog late on Sunday (we’d only arrived home mid-afternoon) for a quick look around and we were amazed at how many people were still milling about. Our lovely neighbour Deb stopped us on the way home and gave us half of her focaccia from Bore Street Bakery, it was so good that we made sure we popped in on Monday to see the lovely Nathan and purchase another from him for our tea on Monday, we are massive bread fans in our house and we had it with salad, cured meats and cheese for dinner on both Sunday and Monday; our bank holiday treat.

We headed into the city early on Monday morning, hungry and ready for our breakfast. It still took us over half an hour just to get down Minster Pool Walk, we stopped for a chat with my favourite crisp company Just Crisps and tried their rather tasty new range of game flavoured crisps, bought some mint tea from The Lichfield Tea Company, based at the Heart of the Country Shopping Village, tasted some amazing nuts, bought some sauces and doggy treats before finally making it to a massive breakfast bap. We took a seat overlooking Minster Pool and the Cathedral and enjoyed the lovely view whilst tucking into our sausage and bacon.

Feeling nicely sated we continued our wanderings towards the cathedral and the Cookery Theatre, stopping to visit Melbourne in Lichfield on the way to grab ourselves a coffee.  We savoured them on the grass bank whilst watching the demo on eggs from Mark Maltby of McKenzie's and we were tempted to just sit there enjoying the sunshine all afternoon but decided we'd better take a wander round the rest of the festival before it got too busy.

I was truly amazed by the variety of food on offer, from vegan to speciality sausages, lasagne, noodles, burgers and pies, the list was endless and whatever you fancied seemed to be available.  We were still full but managed to have a few tasters and chats with the exhibitors. I even managed to sneak in a purchase at The Kitchen Shop stand, they were doing a great show offer on some eco food covers and I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately, it was so busy I didn’t make it to their ice cream demos at the shop, but I heard they were very good, and quite appropriate with the bank holiday weather!

Gin seemed to be a favourite tipple of the event, and the lovely crew at Pom's Kitchen had their own Gin Garden, we took a couple of large G&T's back to the Cathedral lawns to enjoy the cooking demo from Liam Dillon, I was particularly impressed with his commitment to buying locally and utilising all parts of the meat and veg, including pigs head and cauliflower stalks.  We will be visiting The Boat to try out his pig’s head terrine very soon.

The weather was amazing, we really couldn’t have asked for more, but I am glad that we made the effort to arrive early, as by mid afternoon the steets were jam packed.  We decided to call it a day about 2pm returning home with very full shopping bags.

I’m already looking forward to next year, and just want to say a massive thank you to the organisers and supporters and volunteers of this year's event.