Annual Worm Races are held in the second week of April on a measured section of platform 1.
The back room of The Worm Herder’s Arms is the meeting place for the Ancient and Alluvial Lodge of the Fraternal Herders Association. The Association offers the use of its secure worm pens and grading riddles free of charge to members.
THERE IS AN unusual railway bridge just outside the village. It was constructed to cross King Paragore’s Way or, in local parlance, Old Limmer’s Gap, an ancient worm-herder’s pathway protected not just by custom but by a royal decree. This bridge is unique in that it stands only two foot off the ground, and is maintained by
a family of goblins who needless to say have taken full advantage of the transitory resource that passes beneath them. There is a small shrine to Aniger built into the stone pavement of the bridge. Once a year the low bas relief of a group of flattened animals is scrubbed clean and a small wreath laid.
The post office sells postcards of this curious monument along with a pamphlet containing prayers to Aniger and some tasty recipes for track kill.
•HUDDLE•
(Change here for Sto Kerrig)
POPULATION: 134
CLACKS TERMINAL: at Huddle Coat Works, New Sheds.
POST OFFICE: Counter at Huddle General Stores.
ACCOMMODATION: The Huddle Inn.
MARKET DAY: Alternate Thursdays. Bud-Harvest Day Fair in February.
THE SETTLEMENT OF Huddle has grown up around the Huddle Inn, an amalgam of three ancient buildings leaning together like old drunkards at closing time. It was until recently the main coaching inn on the road between Sto Kerrig and Big Cabbage.
A viable textile industry has developed here based on the locally grown Cotton-bud Sprout. Skilled weavers make practical waxed jackets, which are both waterproof and mothproof though sadly prone to caterpillar damage.
•STO KERRIG•
POPULATION: 4,400
CLACKS TERMINAL
POST OFFICE in the Market Square.
ACCOMMODATION: The Crown and Railway Hotel, Coach and Horses Inn.
BANK: The Sto Kerrig Mutual.
MARKET DAYS: Wednesday and Saturday.
Kettle and Kale Games in June, Soul Cake Fair in Sektober, Hog-Ringers Fair in October.
STO KERRIG IS an attractive city located on the River Sour, a tributary of the Ankh, which rises in Sourhead Springs on the borders of Skund and winds its way between banks of willow trees across the plains, to join the Ankh near Colyford.
Remnant Hall, birthplace of the famous artist Josiah Remnant, is now a gallery. The Remnant Foundation offers a small bursary to one student a year, chosen by Miss Constance Remnant, the last surviving and somewhat eccentric relative of the great man. The lucky claimant is expected to work in the distinctive Remnant style but utilizing only what can be found in Miss Remnant’s compost heap and applying the same to the canvas with cabbage stalks.
Sto Kerrig is the centre of a papermaking industry based on cabbages; artisan craftsmen produce fine watercolour paper from the white-leaved Bockingfield cabbage; and a special gummed paper – the gum impregnated with broccoli juice – is supplied to the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, who use this stock for their popular 50p Sto Plains Cabbage Industry stamp, designed to appeal to the homesick immigrant’s nostalgie de la chou.
Just outside the city there is an imposing monument commemorating the fallen of the Great Battle of Sto Kerrig in 1642. The story goes that King Olerve the Unready of Sto Lat was eating a bowl of porridge when he was told of yet another encroachment on to his land by an army from Ankh-Morpork. In a fit of rage he rushed to battle shouting for his unwilling and exhausted infantry to follow him. The large equestrian sculpture depicts a horseman armed only with a spoon and lists the names of each combatant who fell in battle. It goes on to explain that after a short rest they all got up and went home.
HIGH
•MOULDERING•
POPULATION: 240
CLACKS TERMINAL