VISITORS from the Cotswolds , Worcester and the Malverns to the various events at Pershore’s Plum Festival on Bank Holiday Monday will have the benefit of special bus services linking the town’s rail station with the town centre.
Buses will connect with trains from both the Malvern/Worcester and Oxford ends of the Cotswold Line with bus services departing from the station at 10.40am, 12.35pm, 1.10pm, 1.35pm, 2.10pm and 2.35pm.
Return buses will operate from Pershore Broad Street on request to the rail station to meet trains for Worcester and Malvern at 4.30pm and 5.30pm and for Oxford and London at 4.16pm and 5.44pm. Return travel is just £2.
The festival celebrates the town’s long association with plums of all varieties becoming a sea of purple and yellow to reflect the colours of its two most famous plums – the Pershore Purple and the Pershore Yellow Egg Plum.
This year, the organisers have put accessibility top of the priority list to ensure anyone and everyone can have a relaxed and comfortable day out.
MigLoo is providing an accredited Changing Place for those with profound disabilities and complex needs. This offers full social inclusion and caters for everyone including carers. Additional disabled toilets are available throughout the town.
Age UK for Hereford and Worcester will set up their lounge to highlight the loneliness suffered by many people. The lounge comes complete with comfy chairs and a two-man team on hand to talk to everyone who wants to visit. They’ll be handing out sweets too!
A free service featuring coaches with lower steps and a kneeling facility as well as extra wide doors will run throughout the festival and numerous businesses throughout the town involved in the festival are part of the Safe Place Scheme
As well as a Plum Pooch dog show, there is special doggy merchandise on sale and all stall holders are asked to provide water bowls for the festival’s four-legged friends.
The month-long event culminates this weekend and thousands of residents and visitors are expected to flock to the host of free activities.
Now one of the biggest events on the town’s calendar, the festival was resurrected back in 1996 in an attempt to recreate the success of the Pershore Flower Show.
In its heyday in the 1920s, the flower show was known as the ‘largest plum show on Earth.’
Nearly 100 years later the plum festival the event is in its 22nd year and will also celebrate the 191st anniversary of the discovery of the yellow egg plum, found in Tyddesley Wood by George Crooke in 1827.
Visit www.pershoreplumfestival.org.uk for all the latest on the event.
