On Sunday 5th April an early morning visitor to the Village might, if they’d listened carefully, heard the bubble and hiss of lots of pans boiling furiously, as eggs were prepared for the famous Staverton Egg Rolling event. It’s a fairly recent phenomena in the history of the Village but over the 14 years I have been involved in it rules have had to be assessed and changed many times to curtail the enthusiasm of the participants, that is the adult participants not the children, who seem to understand very well what the word ‘rolling’ means!

This year on a bright sunny morning over 60 rollers turned up on the only ‘hill’ in the Village at the bottom of Church Street to compete in 5 categories. The field was divided into boys and girls for no obvious reason other than we could ; lines were drawn up outside the Old Vicarage, a start line and a line at which disqualification was a dead cert if the egg was still airborne; rules were explained and battle commenced. It started with the gentle trickles of the 0-2 year olds, moving on to the modest meanderings of the 3-9s. The competition was definitely hotting up when it came to the teenagers and the male adults but nothing prepared us for the head to head fight of the mums. They came (in great numbers so had to be divided up into two heats), they saw, they weighed up the opposition and in the case of Mrs Fairweather they conquered. Again.  Mrs F does a keen reccy into the eggs of the other would be winners and has various theories about how some of the eggs are prepared to withstand the rigours of the competition but she will not divulge whether she puts any of these methods into the preparation of her winning egg.

Hot cross buns dripping with best butter and lots of chocolate eggs were consumed before everyone departed to enjoy the rest of the Easter break leaving that visitor wondering on his departure about the mass of yolks and egg shells around the green and the bottom of Church Street!