Preparing your winning conker

Drill a hole in your conker of choice (take care at this stage, and most definitely only grown ups should do this). Thread your string through it and tie a knot to keep the conker on the string.
There should be 20cm (8 inches) between knuckle and nut when you’re dangling the conker ready for your first strike.

The Rules (as developed over many years in the playgrounds of England)

• Decide who’s going to go first by tossing a coin or getting your opponent to choose which hand has a conker in it. The winner of the toss or choice decides who will strike first.
• A distance of no less than 8 inches or 20cm of string must be between knuckle and nut. None of this two inches of string nonsense, this is a game of skill.
• Each player takes three alternate strikes at the opponent’s conker. The striker wraps his/her conker string round their hand. Then takes the conker in the other hand and draws it back for the strike.
• If the strings tangle, the first player to call ‘strings’ gets an extra shot.
• If a player hits their opponent’s conker in such a way that it completes a whole circle after being hit – known as ‘round the world’ – the player gets another go.
• If a player drops his/her conker, or it is knocked out of their hand, the other player can shout ‘stamps’ and jump on it; but should its owner first cry ‘no stamps’, then there should be no jumping.
• Each attempted strike must be clearly aimed at the nut, no deliberate mis-hits on your sister’s knuckles, boys.
• The person holding the conker must hold it still. The conker that survives the onslaught is the winner. A small piece of nut or skin remaining on the string doesn’t count, it must be enough to mount an attack.
• Any nut knocked from the string but not smashed may be rethreaded and the game continued.

Scoring

A victorious conker assumes the score of all its victim’s precedent foes. Thus, in a contest  between two fresh conkers, the winner would then have a score of 1 (known as a ‘one-er’). If it then beat another three one-ers, it would become a four-er.

 You will of course be needing conkers for this game.  Enter our tombola and see if you win some here.

October 21st is Apple Day. To celebrate, Paul Ward is opening his Kent orchards to a few lucky Abel & Cole customers.

There will be:

• Apple tasting
• A walk in the orchard
• Chutney making demonstration
• A few other hints and tips on how to cook your apples
• A delicious soup and bread lunch and other apple delights
• All the wisdom in the world regarding apples and apple trees from Paul

…and if you haven’t had enough of apples by then there’ll be some apple juice tasting too.

Essential info:

It’s on 21st October, 11am till 3 pm at:

Mole End Farm
Swattenden Lane
Cranbrook
TN17 3PS
(The nearest railway station is Staplehurst. We can help organise pickup or taxi from here.)

Tickets are £5 per person.
Places are limited, but we’ll try and accommodate as many people as we can.

To bag a ticket, email appleday@abelandcole.co.uk by Monday 17 October.

Please let us know if you have any dietary requirements or physical restrictions.

Not all participants need to be A&C customers, but one in the party should be so that we can charge your account.

 Munch, crunch, apple lunch.

The British apple season is here, and our king of the orchards, Paul Ward, has a whole brigade of different varieties lined up to keep us entertained. Here are just a few of the branches of apple types you’ll see over the coming weeks.

  Read more >>

This is Rachael. She’s Lovely. And Scottish.

This is her sunflower. Read more >>