So the Bustard has taken something of a cluckin’ hiatus recently and for that apologies must be due. Such is the life of the opportunistic ‘travel’ blogger, it seems. But fear not, for I have returned and I bring seasons greetings from the Salisbury Christmas market.

My girlfriend and I do like a Christmas market: we have regularly frequented those in London at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park and along the South Bank. Indeed, so keen are we that we have even agreed so set aside some money each month in 2015 so that this time next year we can venture to an as-yet undecided city in Europe to take in one of the Continent’s finest. So when we came across the website for Salisbury’s own offering, and saw their boast that the Telegraph put it amongst the top 5 in the UK in 2013, we had to go and have a look.

The weather was certainly on our side. Crisp blue skies delivered bright sunshine that defied the gloomy forecasts but still held that wintry chill which seems so crucial to any festive event. Wrapped up against the sharpened air, the bar, of course, was in mind as we crossed the river towards to the market place.

On arrival it became apparent that the regular traders in the town’s central square had not given up their posts to allow for their seasonal counterparts, and so both the regular and Christmas markets traded side by side. This, in turn, reveals the one great weakness of the Salisbury market when held up alongside the competition, its size. I don’t have the exact parameters, but when walking around it feels little bigger than a tennis court and what we’d hoped would provide for a full afternoon’s intense wandering instead only filled half an hour or so.

So that’s the downside, but it isn’t all bad news. On first entering we did as everyone must at these events and got ourselves some mulled wine. It was sweet and genuinely spiced, the real thing as opposed to the industrial-sized plastic tubs of glühwein which are poured into heating canisters at the larger fairs and this typified the market as a whole: what it lacked in quantity it made up for in quality.

Because it was done on a smaller scale, more attention could be paid to each detail. The stalls were all deliberately selected rather than simply hearded in, the whole thing felt more considered and less mass-produced. When you go to Hyde Park you can browse masses of stalls but then you will find exactly the same ones on the South Bank as well; Salisbury was about real people selling their own products. Sure there were things that you can find elsewhere too, but there was a definite authenticity about this one that the larger ones can lack.

After my girlfriend purchased something for her friend’s newborn daughter we left the market and walked for a bit around the beautiful city centre which is an attraction in itself, all tightly packed streets and overhanging timber framed buildings. But we hadn’t planned to need this detour, and that was the problem which gave us a slight feeling of anti-climax.

Because in truth you don’t really go to Christmas markets to do some shopping, you go for the fantasy world they take you to. A world of wooden chalets, fairy lights and Bavarian mountains that rediscovers some the magic with which Christmas was filled when you were a child. The trouble with a market as small as Salisbury’s is that reality is always just over the roof of the nearest stall; the beautiful reality of Salisbury’s city centre, yes, but reality all the same.

We will be going to Winter Wonderland this weekend and for all its crowds and its commercialisation, some of that magic will also be present. Others may disagree, they may be more pragmatic and feel that the hand-picked goods trump whatever intangible, Disneyland fairy dust it was I wanted to find, but that would be to miss what is, for me at least, the whole point. While the Salisbury Christmas market was of unquestionably high quality, and may provide the solution for anyone stuck for presents this year, it never quite managed to make us lose ourselves in that special thrill of Christmas. In short, it never managed to make me a child again.