THE younger sister of last year’s winner has taken the Great Apple Bake Off championship title at this year’s Trowbridge Apple Festival.

Robyn Bourton, aged nine, was judged to be the overall winner of this year’s keenly-contested competition.

Her sister Izzy, now aged ten, and a pupil at The Mead School, won the title year a year ago but was highly commended this time.

Robyn took the children’s award for her apple pie, beating off competition from the adult winner Daphne Warren, to win the overall title.

Mel Jacob, one of the organisers from The BIG Community Grow, said: “Judging is blind so the judges don’t know the names or ages of the cooks when choosing their favourite."

Contestants were asked to bake an apple pie or apple cake using British apples and Fairtrade ingredients.

Town mayor councillor Graham Hill, Hilary Henley of Henley’s Cake Company, and Lindsay Wright of Fairtrade Trowbridge, judged the competition.

The winner of the longest apple peel, Rebecca Nixon, managed to produce a continuous peel measuring 4.61 metre peel, beating the previous festival record of 3.2m.

“This is amazing and incredibly hard,” Mrs Jacob said. “The world record set in 1976 is 52.1m.”

Around 600 people visited this year’s festival, which took place on Saturday (October 15) at Emmanuel’s Yard in Church Street, Trowbridge.

“It was an amazing event with a real community feel and it was great to see people from ages 0-80 enjoying the activities and the apples.

“This year has seen a bumper crop of apples around the country and it was great to share them with the community.

“As always, making apple juice was a hugely popular activity and everyone loved testing the freshly-made juice.

“Thank you to Trowbridge Town Council for a grant that helped make this year’s festival possible.”

As well as live music and a performance by the Bathampton Morris Men, there were 67 different varieties of apples on display and visitors were able to try traditional games and browse the crafts and stalls.

Visitors were invited to take part in lots of apple-themed activities including tasting the different varieties of apple and pressing apples to make apple juice. 

This year’s winner of the Trowbridge Carnival’s soap box derby, Oli Good, ran the Juice Box Derby where children and adults were invited to make a mini vehicle to carry an apple down a course.