Is it all fake tan, grabbing and insane wedding dresses? Nick Harding gives disgruntled travellers a chance to answer back...
Set deep in the heart of the Cotswolds, is a quintessential English town full of tea rooms, antique shops and well-heeled locals in waxed Barbour jackets. Kate Moss and Liz Hurley live nearby. It's picture-postcard perfect.
But not today. As Fabulous arrives in Stow-on-the-Wold, the atmosphere is tense. Some businesses close early and an increased police presence adds an air of malevolence.
Each May, hundreds of gypsies arrive for one of the highlights of their social calendar. The Stow-on-the-Wold gypsy horse fair is an opportunity for travellers to see and be seen - their version of a festival with the chance to conduct a little business, do a little shopping, maybe meet a future husband or wife. And all done in brash, glorious, larger-than-life gypsy style.
Horse fairs are a long-standing gypsy tradition - a place where travellers would meet to sell horses and catch up with old friends and relatives. For years it attracted little attention outside their own community. But recently, gypsies have been big news - unfortunately, not all positive. After years of fighting prejudice, the travelling community is once again an easy target for mockery.
When we catch a taxi from the railway station to the fair we get our first glimpse of the social hostility gypsies struggle with. The driver looks at us as if we're mad and asks: "Why do you want to go there? You do know the gypsies are in town, don't you?"
Driving through the market square, we see pensioners hunkered down in quaint tea rooms, staring slack-jawed as a tribe of curvy girls in skimpy bra tops and hot pants strut by.
The goods on offer are not the home-made jams and crafts you'd find at a normal country fair. Want a horse? There are hundreds. How about a dog, a cockerel, heels for your toddler, a sequinned bra for your pre-teen, a full tweed suit for your six-month-old baby or a crystal-encrusted white leather armchair? No problem.
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