Earlier today, I headed over to Overton, a village in Hampshire outside of Basingstoke. This weekend marked the bi-annual scarecrow festival. I remember seeing the scarecrows in Overton on two occassions in the past a long while ago now, but this was my first proper walk and drive to see as many scarecrows as we could find. This weekend marks the festival with games and other activities for adults and children. It's also the weekend of Basingstoke Live, a free live music festival. Pity about the clash of dates for two major local events as I also want to enjoy the music, but I'll have to go tomorrow instead.
This one mentioned '50 Shades of Hay' as a play on words for the book
The Overton Scarecrow Festival gets the community involved in creating scarecrows around a theme, but this theme is optional. The theme this year was books. The community could create their own scarecrow and put them up in their garden or attached to the front of the house. Local businesses also participated by creating their own scarecrows, which were mainly themed around their service to the community - butcher, vet, restaurant, charity, grocer, beauty, etc.
News
Grocer
Butcher
School
Batman
Restaurant waiter serving champagne
Two scarecrows looking for a sunny field in the estate agent
Scarecrow beauty
Another shot of the butcher's
Fisherman
We did notice a common theme with the 'minion' characters from the film "Despicable Me", who have now appeared in their own spin-off film this summer. I believe that we saw six separate houses that had scarecrow 'minions'.
Minion family
Minions with cross-over to 'Toy Story'
This Minion looks like he is really holding it in
My favourite scarecrow with the theme was the creative "How to Train Your Dragon"; this featured the characters Hiccup (the main human boy character) and Toothless (the wounded black dragon). The dragon was perched on top of the house's porch with Hiccup below.
The other good one, which did not look like a scarecrow at all, was a knight. We were told by someone passing by to go and see this one.
Sir Scare-a-lot
A couple of the scarecrows did look 'creepy', and some of them were funny. I noticed one sitting on a garden wall of a house with a lot of empty bottles around him. There was another sitting at a bus stop, which apparently confused the driver of a bus (according to someone on Twitter), and I loved the police chasing the criminal up the scaffolding.
Scarecrow police and criminal
Below are many photographs of the scarecrows.
After we'd had a little bit of a walk around, we popped in to The Red Lion pub/restaurant for lunch. This scarecrow was outside the pub, offering jugs of Pimms drink.
The restaurant was fairly quiet when we arrived, but it did get a little busier toward the end of the lunch hour. The restaurant is light and airy inside.
We ordered our meals. The bloke had a hamburger with fries, and I had chicken pasta with creole. The pasta was good and had a lot of flavour and a little kick of spice.
Hamburger
Hamburger
Chicken pasta with creole sauce
For dessert, the bloke had raspberry sorbet with Vodka, and I had raspberry and white chocolate creme brulee.
Raspberry sorbet with Vodka
Raspberry and white chocolate creme brulee
The Overton Scarecrow Festival continues tomorrow with new events and a concert tonight if you want to head over to Overton (Hampshire) to see it.
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